/ 


LAWRENCE  J.  GUTTER 

Collection  of  Chicogoono 

THE    UNIVERSITY   OF   ILLINOIS 
AT  CHICAGO 

The  University  Library 


?i. 


Digitized  by  the  Internet  Archive 

in  2012  with  funding  from 

CARLI:  Consortium  of  Academic  and  Research  Libraries  in  Illinois 


http://archive.org/details/chicagoOOpart 


"CHICAGrQ™ 

by 

Jamas  Part on 


From  TEE  ATLANTIC  MONTHLY 
March,  136?  (Vol.  XIX) 


G-0  l^X 


1 86;.] 


Chicago. 


3^5 


CHICAGO. 


WHEN  Professor  Goldwin  Smith 
was  preparing  for  his  voyage  to 
America,  Mr.  Richard  Cobden  said  to 
him,    "See  two  things  in  the  United 
States,  if  nothing  else,  —  Niagara  and 
Chicago."     Professor  Smith  acted  upon 
this  advice,  and,  while  visiting  Chicago, 
acknowledged    that    the     two    objects 
named  by  his  friend  were  indeed  the 
wonders  of  North  America.      Chicago 
can  claim  one  point  of  superiority  over 
its   fellow-wonder.      According  to   the 
geologists,  the  cataract  has  been  about 
four   hundred   centuries    in    becoming 
what  it  is,  but  the  city  has  come  to  pass 
in  thirty-three  years. 

On    Monday    morning,    October    4, 
1834,  word  was  brought  to  the  people 
of  Chicago  that  a  large  black  bear  had 
been  seen  in  a  strip  of  woods  a  quar- 
ter of  a  mile  out  of  town.     The  male 
population  seized  their  guns  and  made 
for  the  forest,  where  the  bear  was  soon 
treed  and  shot.     After  so  cheering  an 
exploit,  the  hunters,  disinclined  to  re- 
sume their  ordinary  labors,  resolved  to 
make  a  day  of  it,  and  have  a  dash  at 
the  wolves  which  then  prowled  nightly 
in  every  part  of  Chicago.     Before  the 
night   closed   in   they  had  killed  forty 
wolves,  all  on  the  site  of  the  present 
Metropolis   of   the   Northwest!      The 
wolves,  however,  did  not  take  the  hint, 
since  we  learn  that,  as  late  as  1838,  the 
howlings   of  this  pest  of  the  prairies 
were  occasionally  heard  far  within  the 
present  city  limits.     Yet  even  then  the 
inhabitants  of  the  place  were  bewildered 
at  the  rapidity  of  its  growth,  and  spoke 
of  the  brilliant  prospects  before  it  very 
much  as  they  now  do. 

In  1830,  Chicago  was  what  it  had 
been  for  a  quarter  of  a  century,  — a  mil- 
iary post  and  fur  station,  consisting  of 
twelve^  habitations.  There  was  a  log 
fort,  with  its  garrison  of  two  companies 
of  United  States  troops.  There  was 
the  fur  agency.  There  were  three  tav- 
erns, so  caJied,  much  haunted  by  idle, 
drunken  Indians,  who  brought  in  furs, 


and  remained  to  drink  up  the  proceeds. 
There  were   two  stores  supplied  with 
such  goods  as  Indians  buy.     There  was 
a  blacksmith's  shop,  a  house  for  the 
interpreter  of  the  station,  and  one  oc- 
cupied by  Indian  chiefs.     All  that  part 
of  Illinois  swarmed  with  Indians.     As 
many   Indian   trails   then   marked   the 
prairie  and  concentrated  at  the  agency- 
house  as  there  are  railroads  now  ter- 
minating in  the  city  of  Chicago  ;  for  the 
Indians  brought  furs  to  that  point  from 
beyond  the  Mississippi,  as  well  as  from 
the  great  prairies   of  the   North   and 
South.     Once  a  year  John  Jacob  Astor 
sent  a  schooner  to  the  post  to  convey 
supplies  to  it,  and  take  away  the  year's 
product  of  fur.     Once  a  week  in  sum- 
mer, twice  a  month  in  winter,  a  mail 
rider  brought  news  to  the  place  from 
the  great  world  on  the  other  side  of  the 
Lakes.     In  1830,  there  resided  at  Chi- 
cago, besides  the  garrison  and  the  fur 
agent,   four  white  families.      In   1831, 
there  were  twelve  families  ;  and  when 
winter  came  on,  the  troops  having  been 
withdrawn,  the  whole  population  moved 
into  the  fort,  and  had  a  pleasant  winter 
of  it,  with  their  debating   society  and 
balls.     In  1832,  the  taxes  amounted  to 
nearly  one   hundred   and  fifty  dollars, 
twelve  of  which  were  expended  in  the 
erection  of  Chicago's  first  public  build- 
ing, —  a  pound  for  stray  cattle. 

But  in  1833,  the  rush  began.  Before 
that  year  closed  there  were  fifty  fami- 
lies floundering  in  Chicago  mud.  When 
the  forty  wolves  were  slain  in  1834, 
there  were,  as  it  appears,  nearly  two 
thousand  inhabitants  in  the  town  ;  and 
in  November,  1835,  more  than  three 
thousand. 

The  motive  must  have  been  power- 
ful which  could  induce  such  large  num- 
bers of  people  to  settle  upon  that  most 
uninviting  shore.  A  new  town  on  a  flat 
prairie,  as  seen  from  car-windows,  has 
usually  the  aspect  which  is  described 
as  God-forsaken.  Wagon-wheels  have 
obliterated  the  only  beauty  the  prairie 


326 


Chicago. 


[March, 


ever  had,  and  streaked  it  with  an  ex- 
cellent article  of  blacking.  There  may- 
be but  twenty  little  wooden  houses  in 
the  place  ;  but  it  is  "  laid  out "  with  all 
the  rigor  of  mathematics  ;  and  every 
visible  object,  whether  animate  or  in- 
animate, the  pigs  that  root  in  the  soft 
black  prairie  mire,  the  boys,  the  horses, 
the  wagons,  the  houses,  the  fences,  the 
school-house,  the  steps  of  the  store,  the 
railroad  platform,  are  all  powdered  or 
plastered  with  disturbed  prairie.  If, 
filled  with  compassion  for  the  unhappy 
beings  whom  stern  fate  seems  to  have 
cast  out  upon  that  dismal  plain,  far 
from  the  abodes  of  men,  the  traveller 
enters  into  conversation  with  them,  he 
finds  them  all  hope  and  animation,  and 
disposed  to  pity  Mm  because  he  neither 
owns  any  corner  lots  in  that  future 
metropolis,  nor  has  intellect  enough  to 
see  what  a  speculation  it  would  be  to 
buy  a  few.  Pity  !  You  might  as  well 
pity  the  Prince  of  Wales  because  he  is 
not  yet  king. 

Chicago,  for  fifteen  years  after  it  be- 
gan its  rapid  increase,  was  perhaps  of 
all  prairie  towns  the  most  repulsive  to 
every  human  sense.  The  place  was  in 
vile  odor  even  among  the  Indians,  since 
the  name  they  gave  it,  —  Chicago,  — if 
it  does  not  mean  skunk,  as  some  old 
hunters  aver,  signifies  nothing  of  sweet- 
er odor  than  wild  onion. 

The  prairie  on  that  part  of  the  shore 
of  Lake  Michigan  appears  to  the  eye 
as  flat  as  the  lake  itself,  and  its  average 
height  above  the  lake  is  about  six  feet. 
A  gentleman  who  arrived  at  Chicago 
from  the  South  in  1833  reports  that  he 
waded  the  last  eight  miles  of  his  jour- 
ney in  water  from  one  to  three  feet 
deep,  —  a  sheet  of  water  extending  as 
far  as  the  eye  could  reach  over  what  is 
now  the  fashionable  quarter  of  Chicago 
and  its  most  elegant  suburbs.  Anoth- 
er traveller  records,  that,  in  1831,  in 
riding  about  what  is  now  the  very  cen- 
tre and  heart  of  the  business  portion  of 
the  city,  he  often  felt  the  water  swash- 
ing through  his  stirrups.  Even  in  dry 
summer  weather  that  part  of  the  prairie 
was  very  wet,  and  during  the  rainy  sea- 
sons no  one  attempted  to  pass  over  it 


on  foot.  "I  would  not  have  given 
sixpence  an  acre  for  the  whole  of  it," 
said  a  gentleman,  speaking  of  land 
much  of  which  is  now  held  at  five  hun- 
dred dollars  a.  foot.  It  looked  so  un- 
promising to  farmers'  eyes,  that  Chica- 
go imported  a  considerable  part  of  its 
provisions  from  the  eastern  shores  of 
Lake  Michigan,  as  late  as  1838.  Chi- 
cago, that  did  this  only  twenty-eight 
years  ago,  now  feeds  states  and  king- 
doms. 

Why  settle  such  a  spot,  when  the 
same  shore  presented  better  sites  ?  It 
was  only  because  the  Chicago  River 
furnished  there  the  possibility  of  a 
harbor  on  the  coast  of  the  stormiest 
of  lakes.  The  Chicago  River  is  not  a 
river.  The  lake  at  that  point  had  cut 
into  the  soft  prairie,  just  as  the  ocean 
cuts  deep,  regular  fissures  into  the  rock- 
bound  coast  of  New  England  and  its 
rocky  isles.  This  cutting,  which  was  a 
hundred  yards  wide,  ran  straight  into 
the  prairie  for  three  quarters  of  a  mile, 
then  divided  into  two  forks,  one  run- 
ning north,  the  other  south,  and  both 
parallel  to  the  lake  shore.  These  two 
branches  extend  for  several  miles,  and 
lose  themselves  at  last  in  the  prairie 
sloughs.  There  is  no  tide  or  flow  to 
this  curious  inlet,  except  such  as  is 
caused  by  the  winds  blowing  the  waters 
of  the  lake  into  it,  which  flows  out 
when  the  wind  changes  or  subsides. 
Originally  the  inlet  was  twenty  feet 
deep,  but,  the  mouth  being  obstructed 
by  a  sand-bar,  it  only  admitted  vessels 
of  thirty  or  forty  tons.  But  the  crevice 
was  there,  ready  for  the  dredge,  which 
has  since  made  it  capable  of  receiving 
the  largest  ships  that  sail  the  lakes, 
and  given  Chicago  thirty  miles  of 
wharves.  Considering  the  peculiar 
destiny  of  Chicago,  as  the  great  dis- 
tributor of  commodities,  no  engineer 
could  have  contrived  a  more  convenient 
harbor ;  for,  go  where  you  will  in  the 
city,  you  cannot  get  far  from  it,  and 
every  mill,  warehouse,  elevator,  and 
factory  can  have  its  branch  or  basin, 
and  receive  and  send  away  merchan- 
dise in  boats  at  its  door.  Those  draw- 
bridges, it  is  true,  are  rather  in  the  way 


1867.] 


Chicago. 


327 


at  present.  It  is  a  trial  to  the  patience 
to  have  to  wait  while  seventeen  lit- 
tle snorting  tug -boats  tow  through 
the  draw  seventeen  long  three-masters 
from  the  lake ;  but  nothing  daunts 
Chicago.  In  three  years  from  this 
time,  those  seventeen  maddening  draw- 
bridges will  have  been  superseded  by 
seventeen  tunnels.  Underneath  that 
oozy  prairie,  which  an  hour's  rain  con- 
verts into  Day  and  Martin,  and  an 
hour's  sun  into  fine  Maccoboy,  there 
is  an  excellent  clay  which  affords  the 
finest  tunnelling,  and  which  indomi- 
table Chicago  turns  to  various  account, 
as  time  reveals  the  need  of  it. 

The  growth  of  Chicago  since  1833, 
though  it  strikes  every  mind  with  won- 
der, is  not  in  the  least  mysterious. 
There  the  city  stands,  at  the  southern 
end  of  Lake  Michigan,  which  gives  it 
necessarily  a  leading  share  of  the  com- 
merce of  all  the  Lakes,  and  easy  access 
by  land,  round  the  southern  shore  of 
Lake  Michigan,  to  all  the  East  and 
Southeast.  But  there  Chicago  was  for 
thirty  years  without  advancing  beyond 
the  rank  of  an  outpost  of  civilization, 
and  there  it  might  have  stood  for  ages 
In  the  same  condition,  if  the  region  be- 
hind it  had  remained  unpeopled.  That 
muddy  inlet,  called  the  Chicago  River, 
is  a  portal  to  the  prairies,  and  Chicago 
has  grown  with  the  development  and 
accessibility  of  that  wonderful  region, 
of  which  it  is  the  grand  depot,  exchange, 
counting-house,  and  metropolis. 

Those  prairies,  long  undervalued,  are 
now  known  to  be  that  portion  of  the 
earth's  surface  where  Nature  has  ac- 
cumulated the  greatest  variety  and 
quantity  of  what  man  needs  for  the 
sustenance  and  the  decoration  of  his 
life,  and  where  she  has  placed  the  few- 
est and  smallest  obstacles  in  his  way. 
That  is  the  region  where  a  deep  furrow 
can  be  drawn  through' the  richest  mould 
for  thirty  miles  or  more,  without  strik- 
ing a  pebble,  a  bog,  or  a  root;  and 
under  almost  every  part  of  which  there 
is  deposited  some  kind  of  mineral — ■ 
clay,  coal,  stone,  lead,  iron  —  useful 
to  man.  Besides  being  well  watered 
by  rivers,    nowhere  is  it  so  easy  to 


make  artificial  highways,  —  roads,  rail- 
roads, and  canals.  The  climate,  like  all 
climates,  has  its  inconveniences,  but, 
upon  the  whole,  there  is  none  better. 
Not  much  of  the  prairie  land  is  flat ; 
most  of  it  is  undulating  enough  for  util- 
ity and  beauty.  Blest  are  the  eyes  that 
see  a  rolling  prairie  at  a  season  of  the 
year  when  the  grass  is  green  and  the 
sky  is  clear  !  It  is  an  enchanting  world 
of  azure  and  billowy  emerald,  where, 
from  the  summit  of  a  green  wave  twenty 
feet  high,  you  can  see  whole  counties. 
The  absence  of  all  dark  objects,  such 
as  woods,  roads,  rocks,  hills,  and  fences, 
gives  the  visitor  the  feeling  that  never 
before  in  all  his  life  was  he  completely 
out  of  doors.  It  is  a  delicious  sensa- 
tion, when  you  inquire  the  way  to  a 
place  ten  miles  off,  to  have  it  pointed 
out,  and  to  make  for  it  across  the  ver- 
dant elastic  prairie,  untrammelled  by 
roads.  The  landscape  has,  too,  such  a 
finished  aspect,  that  the  traveller  finds 
it  difficult  to  believe  that  he  is  not 
wandering  in  a  boundless  park,  refined 
by  a  thousand  years  of  culture.  When 
the  country  has  been  settled  for  many 
years,  it  does  not  lose  this  park-like 
appearance  ;  it  looks  then  as  if  some 
enlightened  nobleman  had  turned  demo- 
crat, torn  down  his  park  walls,  and  in- 
vited his  neighbors  to  come  in  and 
build  upon  his  rounded  knolls  and 
wave-like  ridges. 

And  there  is  enough  of  this  exquisite 
country  for  twelve  great  States,  and  to 
maintain  a  population  of  one  hundred 
millions.  It  is  sure  to  be  the  seat  of 
empire  forever.  Chicago,  the  inevi- 
table metropolis  of  the  vigorous  north- 
western third  of  the  prairie  world,  has 
taken  the  lead  in  rendering  the  whole 
of  it  accessible.  Her  vocation  is  to  put 
every  good  acre  in  all  that  region  with- 
in ten  miles  of  a  railroad,  and  to  con- 
nect every  railroad  with  a  system  of 
ship-canals  terminating  in  the  Missis- 
sippi and  the  Atlantic  Ocean.  That  is, 
has  been,  and  will  be  for  many  a  year 
to  come  Chicago's  work  ;  and  her  own 
growth  will  be  exactly  measured  by  her 
wisdom  and  efficiency  in  doing  it.  So 
far,  every  mile  of  railroad  has  yielded 


328 


Chicago. 


[March, 


its  proportionable  revenue  to  the  great 
prairie  exchange  and  banking-house; 
and  this  fact,  now  clearly  seen  by  every 
creature  in  the  town,  guarantees  the 
execution  of  the  task. 

They  see  it  now ;  but  it  ought  to 
moderate  the  boasting  of  some  of  the 
elders  of  Chicago,  that  they  were  full 
fifteen  years  in  finding  it  out.  The 
boasters  should  further  consider,  that 
the  canal  which  connects  Lake  Michi- 
gan with  the  Illinois  River  and  with 
the  Mississippi  was  thought  of  in  1814, 
and  authorized  in  1825,  when  as  yet 
there  was  no  Chicago  ;  and  the  fogy 
interest  should  ever  be  kept  in  mind 
that  the  projectors  of  the  first  railroad 
to  the  Mississippi  had  to  encounter  the 
opposition  of  most  of  the  business  men 
of  the  town,  who  were  certain  it  would 
ruin  Chicago  by  distributing  its  busi- 
ness along  the  line  of  the  road.  But, 
with  these  deductions  allowed,  there  is 
enough  in  the  early  history  of  the  city 
„to  justify  more  self  -  laudation  than  is 
generally  becoming. 

Those  crowds  of  idle  and  dissolute 
Indians  were  the  first  obstacle  to  the 
growth  of  Chicago  with  which  the  ear- 
ly settlers  had  to  contend.  On  a  day 
in  September,  1833,  seven  thousand  of 
them  gathered  at  the  village  to  meet 
commissioners  of  the  United  States  for 
the  purpose  of  selling  their  lands  in 
Illinois  and  Wisconsin.  In  a  large 
tent  on  the  bank  of  the  river,  the  chiefs 
signed  a  treaty  which  ceded  to  the 
United  States  the  best  twenty  million 
acres  of  the  Northwest,  and  agreed  to 
remove  twenty  days'  journey  west  of 
the  Mississippi.  A  year  later,  four 
thousand  of  the  dusky  nuisances  as- 
sembled in  Chicago  to  receive  their 
first  annual  annuity.  The  goods  to  be 
distributed  were  heaped  up  on  the 
prairie,  and  the  Indians  were  made  to 
sit  down  around  the  pile  in  circles,  the 
squaws  sitting  demurely  in  the  outer 
ring.  Those  who  were  selected  to  dis- 
tribute the  merchandise  took  armfuls 
from  the  heap,  and  tossed  the  articles 
to  favorites  seated  on  the  ground. 
Those  who  were  overlooked  soon  grew 
impatient,  rose   to   their   feet,  pressed 


forward,  and  at  last  rusned  upon  the 
pile,  each  struggling  to  seize  something 
from  it.  So  severe  was  the  scramble, 
that  those  who  had  secured  an  armful 
could  not  get  away,  and  the  greater 
number  of  empty-handed  could  not  get 
near  the  heap.  Then  those  on  the  out- 
side began  to  hurl  heavy  articles  at  the 
crowd,  to  clear  the  way  for  themselves, 
and  the  scramble  ended  in  a  fight, 
in  which  several  of  the  Indians  were 
killed,  and  a  large  number  wounded. 
Night  closed  in  on  a  wild  debauch,  and 
when  the  next  morning  arrived  few  of 
the  Indians  were  the  better  off  for  the 
thirty  thousand  dollars'  worth  of  goods 
which  had  been  given  them.  Similar 
scenes,  with  similar  bloody  results,  were 
enacted  in  the  fall  of  1835  ;  but  that 
was  the  last  Indian  payment  Chicago 
ever  saw.  In  September,  1835,  a  long 
train  of  forty  wagons,  each  drawn  by 
four  oxen,  conveyed  away,  across  the 
prairies,  the  children  and  effects  of 
the  Pottawatomies,  the  men  and  able- 
bodied  women  walking  alongside.  In 
twenty  days  they  crossed  the  Missis- 
sippi, and  for  twenty  days  longer  con- 
tinued their  westward  march,  and  Chi- 
cago was  troubled  with  them  no  more. 
Walking  in  the  imposing  streets  of  the 
Chicago  of  to-day,  how  difficult  it  is  to 
realize  that  thirty-two  years  have  not 
elapsed  since  the  red  men  were  dis- 
possessed of  the  very  site  on  which  the 
city  stands,  and  were  "  toted  "  off  in 
forty  days  to  a  point  now  reached  in 
fifteen  hours  ! 

This  was  the  work  of  our  common 
Uncle,  and  Chicago  does  not  boast  of 
it.  Nor  can  she  claim  the  credit  of  the 
improvement  of  the  harbor  in  1833  and 
1834,  which  first  called  the  attention  of 
the  country  to  that  frontier  post.  The 
United  States  spent  thirty  thousand 
dollars,  in  1833,  in  dredging  out  the 
Chicago  River;  and  in  the  spring  of 
1834  a  most  timely  freshet  swept  away 
the  bar  at  the  mouth  of  the  river,  making 
it  accessible  to  the  largest  lake  craft. 
This  made  Chicago  an  important  lake 
port  at  once.  The  town  had  taken  its 
first  stride  toward  greatness.  In  1836 
the  population  was  four  thousand. 


1867.] 


Chicago. 


329 


Then  there  was  a  check  to  the  pros- 
perity of  Chicago,  as  to  that  of  Illinois 
and  of  the  United  States  ;  and  the 
population  scarcely  increased  for  five 
years,  if,  indeed,  it  did  not  diminish. 
Besides  the  mania  for  land  speculation, 
which  ended  in  prostrating  the  busi- 
ness of  the  whole  country,  Illinoisans 
had  embarked  the  credit  of  the  State  in 
schemes  of  internal  improvement  too 
costly  for  the  time,  though  since  sur- 
passed and  executed  by  private  enter- 
prise. The  State  was  bankrupt ;  work 
on  the  railroads  ceased  ;  and  even  the 
canal  designed  to  connect  Lake  Michi- 
gan with  the  Illinois  River  was  aban- 
doned for  a  time.  Chicago  languished, 
and  repented  that  it  had  ever  dared  to 
be  anything  but  a  military  post.  Those 
corner  lots,  those  river  sites,  those  lake 
borders,  so  eagerly  sought  in  1835, 
were  loathsome  to  the  sight  of  luckless 
holders  in  1837.  Some  men  in  Chicago 
are  millionnaires  to-day  only  because 
they  could  not  sell  their  land  at  any 
price  during  those  years  of  desolation 
and  despair.  But  it  was  in  those  very 
years,  1837  to  1842,  that  Chicago  en- 
tered upon  its  career.  A  little  beef  had 
already  been  salted  and  sent  across  the 
lake  ;  but  in  1839  the  business  began  to 
assume  promising  proportions,  3,000 
cattle  having  been  driven  in  from  the 
prairies,  barrelled,  and  exported.  In 
1838,  a  venturesome  trader  shipped 
thirty-nine  two-bushel  bags  of  wheat. 
*Next  year,  nearly  4,000  bushels  were 
exported  ;  the  next,  10,000  ;  the  next, 
40,000.  In  1842,  the  amount  rose,  all 
at  once,  from  40,000  to  nearly  600,000, 
and  announced  to  parties  interested, 
that  the  "  hard  times  "  were  coming  to 
an  end  in  Chicago.  But  the  soft  times 
were  not.  That  mountain  of  grain  was 
brought  into  this  quagmire  of  a  town 
from  far  back  in  the  prairies,  —  twenty, 
fifty,  one  hundred,  and  even  one  hun- 
dred and  fifty  miles  !  The  season  for 
carrying  grain  to  market  is  also  the 
season  of  rain,  and  many  a  farmer  in 
those  times  has  seen  his  load  hopelessly 
"  slewed  "  within  what  is  now  Chicago. 
The  streets  used  often  to  be  utterly 
choked  and  impassable  from  the  con- 


course of  wagons,  which  ground  the 
roads  into  long  vats  of  blacking.  And 
yet,  before  there  was  a  railroad  begun 
or  a  canal  finished,  Chicago  exported 
two  and  a  quarter  millions  of  bushels 
of  grain  in  a  year,  and  sent  back,  on 
most  of  the  wagons  that  brought  it, 
part  of  a  load  of  merchandise. 

The  canal  connecting  the  Chicago 
River  with  the  Illinois,  and  through 
that  river  with  the  Mississippi,  begun 
in  1836,  and  finished  in  1848,  opened 
to  Chicago  an  immense  area  of  un- 
cultivated acres,  which  could  then 
come  into  profitable  cultivation.  But 
the  immediate  effects  of  this  great 
event  upon  the  trade  of  the  city  were 
not  great  enough  to  open  the  eyes  of 
its  business  men  to  the  single  con- 
dition upon  which  the  growth  of  the 
town  depended,  namely,  its  accessi- 
bility to  the  Eastern  cities  and  to  the 
great  prairie  world.  Chicago  was  still 
little  more  than  a  thriving  country 
town,  which  received  the  products  of 
adjacent  farms,  and  gave  in  exchange 
merchandise  brought  in  three  weeks 
from  the  sea-shore.  Middle-aged  gen- 
tlemen  of  Chicago  have  a  lively  recol- 
lection of  the  opposition  of  store- 
keepers to  the  first  project  of  a  rail- 
road to  the  Mississippi  River.  In 
1850,  the  Chicago  and  Galena  Rail- 
road was  completed  for  forty-two  miles, 
to  the  rolling  prairies  by  which  the 
beautiful  and  vigorous  town  of  Elgin 
is  surrounded.  From  that  time,  there 
were  indeed  fewer  ox-teams  wallowing 
in  Chicago  mire,  but  trade  increased 
and  changed  its  character  from  retail 
to  wholesale  ;  and  the  wheat  coming 
in  by  car-loads  to  the  river  shore  was 
poured  into  the  waiting  vessels  with  a 
great  saving  of  labor  and  expense.  Still 
there  were  men  in  Chicago  who  did 
not  take  the  idea.  The  money  which 
built  that  forty-two  miles  of  road  had 
to  be  borrowed,  in  great  part,  on  the 
personal  responsibility  of  the  directors, 
and  the  road  could  not  have  been  built 
at  all  but  for  the  fact  that  a  prairie  rail- 
road is  nothing  but  two  ditches  and  a 
track.  The  railroads,  said  the  fogies, 
will  drain  the  country  of  its  resources, 


330 


Chicago. 


[March, 


Chicago  of  its  business,  and  place  the 
welfare  of  Illinois  at  the  mercy  of  East- 
ern capitalists.  But  when,  in  1853,  the 
road  paid  a  dividend  of  eleven  per 
cent,  and  it  was  found  that  Chicago 
had  trebled  its  population  in  six  years 
after  the  opening  of  the  canal,  and 
that  every  mile  of  the  railroad  had 
poured  its  quota  of  wealth  into  Chicago 
coffers,  then  the  truth  took  possession 
of  the  whole  mind  of  Chicago,  and  be- 
came its  fixed  idea,  that  every  acre 
with  which  it  could  put  itself  into 
easy  communication  must  pay  tribute 
to  it  forever.,  From  that  time  there 
has  been  no  pause  and  no  hesitation ; 
but  all  the  surplus  force  and  revenue 
of  Chicago  have  been  expended  in 
making  itself  the  centre  of  a  great  sys- 
tem of  railroads  and  canals. 

It  was  in  April,  1849,  eighteen  years 
ago,  that  the  whistle  of  the  locomotive 
was  first  heard  on  the  prairies  west  of 
Chicago  ;  and  this  locomotive  drew  a 
train  to  a  distance  of  ten  miles  from 
the  city,  amid  the  cheers  of  the  people 
who  had  little  to  lose,  and  the  fore- 
bodings of  most  of  those  who  had 
much.  The  railroad  system  of  which 
Chicago  is  a  centre  now  includes  eight 
thousand  miles  of  track,  and  the  rail- 
road system  of  which  Chicago  is  the 
centre  embraces  nearly  five  thousand 
miles  of  track.  A  passenger  train 
reaches  or  leaves  the  city  every  fifteen 
minutes  of  the  twenty-four  hours.  Not 
less  than  two  hundred  trains  arrive  or 
depart  in  a  day  and  night.  No  farm 
in  Illinois  is  more  than  fifty  miles  from 
a  station,  and  very  few  so  far ;  the 
average  distance,  as  near  as  we  can 
compute  so  impossible  a  problem,  is 
not  more  than  seven  miles.  There  are 
sixteen  points  on  the  Mississippi  which 
have  railroad  communication  with  Chi- 
cago. The  Illinois  Central,  with  its 
seven  hundred  miles  of  road,  lays  open 
the  central  part  of  the  long  State  of 
Illinois,  and  has  brought  into  culture 
nearly  two  million  acres  of  the  best 
land  in  the  world.  The  straight  road 
to  St.  Louis  renders  accessible  another 
line  of  Illinois  counties,  besides  "tap- 
ping" the  commerce  of  the  Missouri 


River  at  Alton,  and  that  of  the  Lower 
Mississippi  at  St.  Louis.  Other  roads 
stretch  out  long  arms  into  the  fertile 
prairies  of  Iowa,  Wisconsin,  Minne- 
sota, Missouri,  and  extend  far  to- 
wards the  mining  region  of  Lake  Su- 
perior ;  and  on  whatever  lines  railroads 
are  building  or  contemplated  to  the 
Pacific,  Chicago  means  to  be  ready 
with  facilities  for  reaping  her  natural 
share  of  the  advantages  resulting  from 
their  completion.  It  is  but  fifteen  years 
since  Chicago  first  had  railroad  com- 
munication with  the  cities  on  the  At- 
lantic coast,  and  the  traveller  now  has 
his  choice  of  three  main  lines,  which 
branch  out  to  every  important  inter- 
mediate point.  Railroad  depots,  im- 
mense in  extent  and  admirably  con- 
venient, are  rising  in  Chicago  in  an- 
ticipation of  the  incalculable  business 
of  the  future,  —  such  depots  as  ought 
to  put  to  shame  the  directors  of  some 
of  our  Eastern  roads,  who  afford  to 
their  human  freight  accommodations 
less  generous  than  Chicago  bestows 
upon  the  pigs  and  cattle  that  pass 
through  the  city.  There  is  one  depot 
for  passengers  only,  which  has  under 
cover  three  quarters  of  a  mile  of  track, 
from  which  three  trains  can  start  at 
the  same  moment,  without  the  least 
danger  of  interference,  and  wherein  no 
passenger  has  to  cross  a  track  in 
changing  cars.  In  every  sphere  of 
exertion,  those  Western  men  improve 
upon  Eastern  models  and  methods. 
They  have  sleeping-cars  in  those  grand 
depots,  built  at  a  cost  of  twenty-five 
thousand  dollars,  in  which  a  king 
would  only  be  too  happy  to  ride,  sup, 
sleep,  and  play  whist. 

In  some  parts  of  the  country,  rail- 
roads have  temporarily  diminished  the 
importance  of  water  communication. 
This  is  not  the  case  with  the  Great  Lakes, 
nor  with  Chicago's  lion's  share  of  their 
commerce.  It  is  but  yesterday  that 
Astor's  single  schooner  of  forty  tons 
was  the  only  vessel  known  to  the  Chi- 
cago River  except  Indian  canoes.  Chi- 
cago is  now  more  than  the  Marseilles 
of  our  Mediterranean,  though  Marseilles 
was  a  place  of  note  twenty-four  hundred 


1 86;.] 


Chicago. 


331 


years  ago.  Seventy-seven  steamers, 
one  hundred  and  eighteen  barques,  for- 
ty-three brigs,  six  hundred  and  thirteen 
schooners,  fifty-three  scows  and  barges, 
—  in  all,  nine  hundred  and  four  vessels, 
carrying  218,215  tons,  and  employing 
ten  thousand  sailors,  —  now  ply  be- 
tween Chicago  and  the  other  Lake 
ports.  In  the  winter,  after  navigation 
has  closed,  four  hundred  vessels  may 
be  counted  in  the  harbor,  frozen  up 
safely  in  the  ice.  On  a  certain  day  of 
last  November,  a  favorable  wind  blew 
into  port  two  hundred  and  eighteen 
vessels  loaded  with  timber. 

Provided  thus  with  the  means  of 
gathering  in  and  sending  away  the 
surplus  products  of  the  prairies,  the 
granary  of  the  world,  and  of  supplying 
them  with  merchandise  in  return,  Chi- 
cago has,  for  the  last  few  years,  trans- 
acted an  amount  of  business  that  as- 
tonishes and  bewilders  herself,  when 
she  has  time  to  pause  and  add  up  the 
figures.  The  export  of  grain,  which 
began  in  1838  with  seventy-eight  bush- 
els, had  run  up  to  six  millions  and  a 
half  in  1853.  In  1854,  when  there 
were  two  lines  of  railroad  in  operation 
across  the  State  of  Michigan  to  the 
East,  the  export  of  grain  more  than 
doubled,  the  quantity  being  nearly 
eleven  millions  of  bushels.  From  that 
time,  the  export  has  been  as  follows :  — 


Year. 

Bushels. . 

1854    •     • 

.    12,932,320 

1855     . 

16,633,700 

1856    .     . 

.    21,583,221 

1857     .     • 

.    18,032,678 

1858    .     . 

.   20,035,166 

1859    •     • 

16,771,812 

i860 

.    31,108,759 

l86l 

50,481,862 

1862 

56,484,110 

1863    .     . 

•    54.741,839 

1864-5  •     •     • 

47,124,494 

1865-6  . 

53,212,224 

with  which  this  inconceivable  quantity 
of  grain  is  "  handled,"  as  they  term  it, 
although  hands  never  touch  it,  is  one 
of  the  wonders  of  Chicago.  Whether 
it  arrives  by  canal,  railroad,  or  lake,  it 
comes  "in  bulk,"  i.  e.  without  bags  or 


barrels,  loose  in  the  car  or  boat.  The 
train  or  the  vessel  stops  at  the  side  of 
one  of  those  seventeen  tall  elevators,  by 
which  the  grain  is  pumped  into  enor- 
mous bins,  and  poured  out  into  other 
cars  or  vessels  on  the  other  side  of  the 
building,  —  the  double  operation  being 
performed  in  a  few  minutes  by  steam. 
The  utmost  care  is  taken  to  do  this 
business  honestly.  The  grain  is  all 
inspected,  and  the  brand  of  the  in- 
spector fixes  its  grade  absolutely.  The 
owner  may  have  his  grain  deposited  in 
the  part  of  the  elevator  assigned  to  its 
quality,  where  it  blends  with  a  moun- 
tain of  the  same  grade.  He  never  sees 
his  grain  again,  but  he  carries  away 
the  receipt  of  the  clerk  of  the  eleva- 
tor, which  represents  his  property  as 
unquestionably  as  a  certified  check. 
Those  little  slips  of  paper,  changing 
hands  on  'Change,  constitute  the  busi- 
ness of  the  "grain  men  "  of  Chicago. 
When  Chicago  exported  a  few  thou- 
sands of  bushels  a  year,  the  business 
blocked  the  streets  and  filled  the  town 
with  commotion  ;  but  now  that  it  ex- 
ports fifty  or  sixty  millions  of  bushels, 
a  person  might  live  a  month  at  Chicago 
without  being  aware  that  anything  was 
doing  in  grain. 

Recently,  Chicago  has  sought  to 
economize  in  transportation,  by  send- 
ing away  part  of  this  great  mass  of 
food  in  the  form  of  flour.  The  ten 
flour-mills  there  produce  just  one  thou- 
sand barrels  of  flour  every  wrorking  day. 

Saving  in  the  cost  of  transportation 
being  Chicago's  special  business  and 
mission,  and  corn  being  the  great  prod- 
uct of  the  Northwest,  it  is  in  the  trans- 
port of  that  grain  that  the  most  surpris- 
ing economy  has  been  effected.  A  way 
has  been  discovered  of  packing  fifteen 
or  twenty  bushels  of  Indian  corn  in  a 
single  barrel.  "  The  corn  crop,"  as 
Mr.  S.  B.  Ruggles  remarked  recently 
in  Chicago,  "  is  condensed  and  reduced 
in  bulk  by  feeding  it  into  an  animal 
form,  more  portable.  The  hog  eats  the 
corn,  and  Europe  eats  the  hog.  Corn 
thus  becomes  incarnate  ;  for  what  is  a 
hog,  but  fifteen  or  twenty  bushels  of 
corn  on  four  legs  ?  "     Mr.  Ruggles  fur- 


332 


Chicago. 


[March, 


ther  observed,  amid  the  laughter  of  his 
audience,  that  the  three  hundred  mil- 
lions of  pounds  of  American  pork  ex- 
ported to  Europe  in  1863  were  equal  to 
"  a  million  and  a  half  of  hogs  marching 
across  the  ocean." 

The  business  of  pork  packing,  as  it 
is  called,  which  can  only  be  done  to 
advantage  on  a  great  scale,  has  attained 
enormous  proportions  in  Chicago,  sur- 
passing those  of  the  same  business  in 
Cincinnati,  where  it  originated.  In 
one  season  of  three  months,  Chicago 
has  converted  904,659  hogs  into  pork ; 
which  was  one  third  of  all  the  hogs 
massacred  in  the  Western  country 
during  the  year.  This  was  in  1863,  a 
year  of  abundance  ;  and  it  has  not 
been  equalled  since.  Walking  in  single 
file,  close  together,  that  number  of  hogs 
would  form  a  line  reaching  from  Chi- 
cago to  New  York. 

During  the  last  three  years,  the  num- 
ber of  cattle  received  in  Chicago  from 
the  prairies,  and  sent  away  in  various 
forms  to  the  East,  has  averaged  about 
one  thousand  for  each  working  day. 
In  one  year,  the  last  year  of  the  war, 
92,459  of  these  cattle  were  killed,  salted, 
and  barrelled  in  Chicago.  Neverthe- 
less, a  person  might  reside  there  for 
years,  and  never  suspect  that  any  busi- 
ness was  done  in  cattle,  never  see  a 
drove,  never  hear  the  bellow  of  an  ox. 

A  bullock  is  an  awkward  piece  of 
merchandise  to  "  handle  "• ;  he  has  a 
will  of  his  own,  with  much  power  to 
resist  the  will  of  other  creatures  ;  he 
cannot  be  pumped  up  into  an  elevator, 
nor  shot  into  the  hold  of  a  vessel ;  he 
must  have  two  pails  of  water  every 
twelve  hours,  and  he  cannot 'go  long- 
without  a  large  bundle  of  hay.  There 
is  also  a  Society  for  the  Prevention  of 
Cruelty  to  Animals,  with  an  eloquent 
and  resolute  Henry  Bergh  to  see  that 
cattle  have  their  rights.  Chicago  has 
learned  to  conform  to  these  circum- 
stances, and  new  challenges  mankind 
to  admire  the  exquisite  way  in  which 
those  three  hundred  thousand  cattle 
per  annum,  and  that  million  and  a  half 
of  hogs,  sheep,  and  calves,  are  received, 
lodged,  entertained,  and  despatched. 


Out  on  the  flat  prairie,  four  miles 
south  of  the  city,  and  two  feet  below 
the  level  of  the  river, — part  of  that 
eight  miles  which  our  traveller  found 
under  water  in  1833,  —  may  be  seen 
the  famous  "  Stock  Yards,"  styled, 
in  one  of  the  Chicago  guide  -  books, 
"the  great  bovine  city  of  the 
world."  Two  millions  of  dollars 
have  been  expended  there  in  the  con- 
struction of  a  cattle  market.  The  com- 
pany owning  it  have  now  nearly  a  square 
mile  of  land,  345  acres  of  which  are 
already  enclosed  into  cattle  pens,  —  150 
of  these  acres  being  floored  with  plank. 
There  is  at  the  present  time  pen  room 
for  20,000  cattle,  75,000  hogs,  and 
20,000  sheep,  the  sheep  and  hogs  being 
provided  with  sheds  ;  and  no  Thursday 
has  passed  since  the  yards  were  opened 
when  they  were  not  full,  —  Thursday 
being  the  fullest  day.  This  bovine  city 
of  the  world,  like  all  other  prairie  cities, 
is  laid  out  in  streets  and  alleys,  cross- 
ing at  right  angles.  The  projectors 
have  paid  New  York  the  compliment 
of  naming  the  principal  street  Broad- 
way. It  is  a  mile  long  and  seventy-five 
feet  wide,  and  is  divided  by  a  light 
fence  into  three  paths,  so  that  herds  of 
cattle  can  pass  one  another  without 
mingling,  and  leave  an  unobstructed 
road  for  the  drovers.  Nine  railroads 
have  constructed  branches  to  the  yards, 
and  there  is  to  be  a  canal  connecting  it 
with  one  of  the  forks  of  the  Chicago 
River. 

Nothing  is  more  simple  and  easy 
than  the  working  of  the  system  of  these 
stock  yards.  The  sum  of  anguish  an- 
nually endured  in  the  United  States 
will  be  greatly  lessened  when  that  sys- 
tem shall  prevail  all  along  the  line  from 
the  prairies  to  the  Atlantic.  A  cattle 
train  stops  along  a  street  of  pens  ;  the 
side  of  each  car  is  removed  ;  a  gently 
declining  bridge  wooes  the  living  freight 
down  into  a  clean,  planked  enclosure, 
where  on  one  side  is  a  long  trough, 
which  the  turn  of  a  faucet  fills  with 
water,  and  on  another  side  is  a  manger 
which  can  be  immediately  filled  with 
hay.  While  the  tired  and  hungry  ani- 
mals are  enjoying  this  respite  from  the 


1867.] 


Chicago. 


333 


torture  of  their  ride,  their  owner  or 
his  agent  finds  comfort  in  the  Hough 
House  (so  named  from  one  of  the  chief 
promoters  of  the  enterprise),  a  hand- 
some hotel  of  yellow  stone,  built  solely 
for  the  accommodation  of  the  "  cattle 
men,"  and  capable  of  entertaining  two 
hundred  of  them  at  once.  A  few  steps 
from  the  hotel  is  the  Cattle  Exchange, 
another  spacious  and  elegant  edifice  of 
yellow  stone,  wherein  there  is  a  great 
room  for  the  chaffering  or  preliminary 
"  gassing "  (as  the  drovers  term  it)  of 
buyers  and  sellers  ;  also  a  bank  solely 
for  cattle  men's  use,  with  a  daily  busi- 
ness ranging  from  one  hundred  thou- 
sand to  five  hundred  thousand  dollars  ; 
also  a  telegraph  office,  which  reports, 
from  time  to  time,  the  price  of  beef, 
pork,  and  mutton  in  two  hemispheres, 
and  sends  back  to  the  cattle  markets  of 
mankind  the  condition  of  affairs  in  this, 
the  great  bovine  city  of  the  world.  The 
"gassing"  being  accomplished,  the 
cattle  men  leave  this  fine  Exchange, 
and  go  forth  to  view  the  cattle  which 
have  been  the  subject  of  their  conversa- 
tion, and  they  move  about  in  the  midst 
of  those  prodigious  herds,  and  inspect 
the  occupants  of  any  particular  pen, 
with  as  much  ease  as  a  lady  examines 
pictures  in  a  window.  The  purchase 
completed,  the  cattle  are  driven  along, 
through  opening  pens  and  broad  streets, 
to  the  yards  adjoining  the  railroad,  by 
which  they  are  to  resume  their  journey. 
On  the  way  to  those  yards,  they  are 
weighed  at  the  rate  of  thirty  cattle  a 
minute,  by  merely  pausing  in  the  weigh- 
ing pen  as  they  pass.  The  men  return 
to  the  Exchange,  where  the  money  is 
paid,  all  the  cattle  business  being  done 
for  cash  ;  after  which  they  conclude  the 
affair  by  dining  together  at  the  hotel, 
or  at  an  excellent  restaurant  in  the 
Exchange  itself. 

In  this  elegant  Exchange  room  two 
classes  of  cattle  men  meet,  —  those  who 
collect  the  cattle  from  the  prairie  States, 
—  Texas,  Missouri,  Kansas,  Illinois, 
Iowa,  Wisconsin,  Minnesota,  —  and 
those  who  distribute  the  cattle  among 
the  Eastern  cities.  One  of  the  potent 
civilizers  is  doing  business  on  the  grand 


scale.  .  By  means  of  this  Cattle  Ex- 
change, a  repulsive  and  barbarizing 
business  is  lifted  out  of  the  mire,  and 
rendered  clean,  easy,  respectable,  and 
pleasant.  The  actual  handling  and 
supervision  of  the  cattle  require  few 
men,  who  are  themselves  raised  in  the 
social  scale  by  being  parts  of  a  great 
system ;  while  the  controlling  minds 
are  left  free  to  work  at  the  arithmetic 
and  book-keeping  of  the  business.  We 
remember  with  pleasure  the  able  and  po- 
lite gentlemen  the  necessities  of  whose 
business  suggested  this  enterprise,  and 
who  now  control  it.  The  economy  of 
the  system  is  something  worth  consid- 
eration. The  design  of  the  directors 
is  to  keep  the  rent  of  the  pens  at  such 
rates  as  to  exactly  pay  the  cost  of 
cleaning  and  preserving  them,  and  to 
get  the  requisite  profit  only  from  the 
sale  of  hay  and  corn.  One  hundred 
tons  of  hay  are  frequently  consumed  in 
the  yards  in  one  day.  If  those  yards 
were  in  New  England,  the  sale  of  the 
manure  would  be  an  important  part  of 
the  business  ;  but  in  those  fertile  prai- 
ries, they  are  glad  to  sell  it  at  ten  cents 
a  wagon-load,  which  is  less  than  the 
cost  of  shovelling  it  up. 

There  is  one  commodity  in  which 
Chicago  deals  that  makes  a  show  pro- 
portioned to  its  importance.  Six  hun- 
dred and  fourteen  millions  of  feet  of 
timber,  equal  to  about  fifty  millions  of 
ordinary  pine  boards,  which  Chicago 
sold  last  year,  cannot  be  hidden  in*  a 
corner.  The  prairies,  to  which  Nature 
has  been  so  variously  bountiful,  do 
lack  this  first  necessity  of  the  settler, 
and  it  is  Chicago  that  sends  up  the 
lake  for  it  and  supplies  it  to  the  prai- 
ries. Miles  of  timber  yards  extend 
along  one  of  the  forks  of  the  river  ;  the 
harbor  is  choked  with  arriving  timber 
vessels  ;  timber  trains  shoot  over  the 
prairies  in  every  direction.  To  econo- 
mize transportation,  they  are  now  be- 
ginning to  despatch  timber  in  the  form 
of  ready-made  houses.  There  is  a  firm 
in  Chicago  which  is  happy  to  furnish 
cottages,  villas,  school-houses,  stores, 
taverns,  churches,  court  -  houses,  or 
towns,  wholesale  and  retail,  and  to  for- 


334 


Chicago. 


[March, 


ward  them,  securely  packed,  to  any  part 
of  the  country.  No  doubt  we  shall 
soon  have  the  exhilaration  of  reading 
advertisements  of  these  town-makers, 
to  the  effect,  that  orders  for  the  smallest 
villages  will  be  thankfully  received ; 
county  towns  made  to  order  ;  a  metrop- 
olis furnished  with  punctuality  and 
despatch  ;  any  town  on  our  list  sent, 
carriage  paid,  on  receipt  of  price  ;  rows 
of  cottages  always  on  hand  ;  churches 
in  every  style.  N.  B.  Clergymen  and 
others  are  requested  to  call  before  pur- 
chasing elsewhere. 

While  this  great  business  has  been 
forming,  Chicago  itself  has  undergone 
many*  and  strange  transformations. 
The  population,  which  numbered  70 
in  1830,  was  4,853  in  1840.  During 
the  next  five  years  it  nearly  trebled, 
being  12,088  in  1845.  In  ^o,  the 
year  in  which  the  railroad  was  opened 
to  Elgin,  the  population  had  mounted 
to  29,963,  and  during  the  next  ten  years 
it  quadrupled.  In  i860,  110,973  per- 
sons lived  in  Chicago.  In  1865,  after 
four  years  of  war,  the  population  was 
178,900.  In  this  spring  of  1867,  if  we 
include  the  suburban  villages,  which 
are  numerous  and  flourishing,  and 
which  are  as  much  Chicago  as  Harlem 
is  New  York,  we  may  safely  put  down 
the  population  at  230,000.  The  closing 
of  the  war  has  not  checked  the  growth 
of  the  city.  We  are  assured  by  the 
moderate  and  conscientious  "  Chicago 
Tribune,"  that  in  1866  the  number  of 
houses  of  all  kinds  built  in  Chicago 
was  nine  thousand ;  for  the  construction 
of  which  sixty-two  millions  of  bricks 
were  made  from  the  clay  over  which 
the  city  stands.  We  learn,  also,  from  a 
series  of  articles  in  the  vigorous  and 
enterprising  "  Chicago  Republican," 
that  in  the  young  cities  of  the  North- 
west, which  must  ever  flourish  or  de- 
cline with  Chicago,  there  is  the  same 
astonishing  activity  in  the  building  of 
houses. 

The  city  is  no  longer  a  quagmire. 
For  many  years  after  Chicago  began  to 
be  a  flourishing  town,  its  business  men 
aimed  to  make  a  rapid  fortune,  and  re- 
tire to  the  banks  of  the  Hudson,  or  to 


the  pleasant  places  of  New  England, 
and  enjoy  it.  Who  could  enjoy  life  on 
a  wet  prairie,  made  passable  by  pine 
boards,  through  the  knot-holes  and 
crevices  of  which  water  could  be  seen, 
and  where  a  carriage  would  sink  three 
or  four  feet  within  two  miles  of  the 
court-house  ?  But  about  fifteen  years 
ago,  when  the  effect  of  the  first  rail- 
road revealed  the  future  of  Chicago, 
the  leading  men  said  to  one  another : 
"  This  city  is  to  be  the  abode  of  a  mil- 
lion or  more  of  the  American  people. 
Meanwhile  it  is  our  home.  Let  us 
make  it  fit  to  live  in.  Let  us  make  it 
pleasant  for  our  children."  Seldom 
have  men  taken  hold  of  a  task  more  re- 
pulsive or  more  difficult,  and  seldom 
has  human  labor  produced  such  strik- 
ing results  in  so  short  a  time.  The 
mud  and  water  for  a  long  period  were 
the  despair  of  the  people,  since  water 
will  only  run  down  hill,  and  part  of  the 
town  was  below  the  level  of  the  lake. 
Planking  was  a  poor  expedient,  though 
unavoidable  for  a  time.  They  tried  a 
system  of  open  ditches  for  a  while, 
which  in  wet  seasons  only  aggravated 
the  difficulty.  Many  hollow  places 
were  filled  up,  but  the  whole  prairie 
was  in  fault.  It  became  clear,  at 
length,  that  nothing  would  suffice  short 
of  raising  the  whole  town  ;  and,  accord- 
ingly, a  higher  grade  was  established,  to 
which  all  new  buildings  were  required 
to  conform.  It  soon  appeared  that  this 
grade  was  not  high  enough,  and  one 
still  higher  was  ordained.  Even  this 
proved  inadequate ;  and  the  present 
grade  was  adopted,  which  lifts  Chicago 
about  twelve  feet  above  the  level  of  the 
prairie,  and  renders  it  perfectly  drain- 
able,  and  gives  dry  cellarage.  It  is  as 
common  now  in  Chicago  to  store  such 
merchandise  as  dry  goods,  books,  and 
tea  in  basements,  as  it  is  in  sandy  New 
York  ;  and  in  nearly  all  the  newer  res- 
idences the  dining-room  and  kitchen 
are  in  the  basement.  During  the  ten 
years  while  Chicago  was  going  up  out 
of  the  mud  of  the  prairie  to  its  present 
elevation,  it  was  the  best  place  in  the 
world  in  which  to  develop  the  muscles 
of  the  lower  half  of  the  body.     All  the 


1867.] 


Chicago. 


335 


newest  houses  were  built,  of  course, 
upon  the  new  grade,  and  some  spirited 
owners  raised  old  buildings  to  the  prop- 
er level ;  but  many  houses  were  upon 
the  grades  previously  established,  and 
a  large  number  were  down  upon  the 
original  prairie.  The  consequence  was, 
that  the  plank  sidewalks  became  a  se- 
ries of  stairs.  For  half  a  block  you 
would  walk  upon  an  elevated  path,  look- 
ing down  upon  the  vehicles  of  the  street 
many  feet  below ;  then,  you  would  de- 
scend a  flight  of  stairs  to,  perhaps,  the 
lowest  level  of  all,  along  which  you 
would  proceed  only  a  few  steps,  when 
another  flight  of  stairs  assisted  you  to 
one  of  the  other  grades.  Such,  how- 
ever, were  the  energy  and  public  spirit 
of  the  people,  that  these  inequalities,  al- 
though their  removal  involved  immense 
expenditure,  have  nearly  all  disappeared. 
The  huge  Tremont  House,  a  solid  hotel 
as  large  as  the  Astor,  was  raised  bodily 
from  its  foundation  and  left  at  the  proper 
height ;  and  whole  blocks  o|"  brick  stores 
went  up  about  the  same  time  to  the  same 
serene  elevation.  To  this  day,  how- 
ever, there  are  places  in  the  less  impor- 
tant streets  where  the  stranger  can  see 
at  one  view  all  the  past  grades  of  the 
town.  The  sidewalk  will  be  upon  the 
grade  now  established  ;  the  main  street, 
upon  the  one  that  preceded  the  present 
and  final  level  ;  the  houses,  upon  the 
grade  established  when  it  was  first  de- 
termined  to  raise  the  town  ;  while  in 
the  vacant  lots  near  by  portions  of  the 
undisturbed  prairie  may  be  discovered. 
The  principal  streets  are  now  paved 
with  stone,  or  else  with  that  ne  plus  ul- 
tra of  comfort  for  horse  and  rider,  for 
passer-by  and  ladies  living  near,  —  the 
Nicholson  pavement. 

The  people  of  Chicago  have  had  a 
long  and  severe  struggle  with  their 
river,  and  they  have  not  yet  made  a 
complete  conquest  of  it.  The  river  and 
its  two  forks,  as  we  have  before  re- 
marked, so  divide  the  town,  that  you 
cannot  go  far  in  any  direction  without 
crossing  one  of  them.  In  old  times 
the  Indians  carried  people  over  in  their 
canoes,  and,  for  some  time  after  the 
Indians  had  been  wagoned  off  beyond 


the  Mississippi,  a  chance  canoe  was 
still  the  usual  means  of  crossing.  Fer- 
ries of  canoes  were  then  established, 
and,  in  course  of  time,  the  canoes  ex- 
panded into  commodious  row-boats. 
Next,  floating  bridges  were  tried,  much 
to  the  discontent  of  the  mariners,  who 
found  it  difficult  to  run  in  their  swift 
vessels  in  time.  One  day,  when  a  gale 
was  blowing  inward,  a  vessel  came 
rushing  into  the  river,  and,  before  the 
bridge  could  be  floated  round,  ran  into 
it,  cut  it  in  halves,  and  kept  on  her 
way  up  the  stream.  The  sailors  much 
approved  this  manoeuvre,  and  it  had 
also  the  effect  of  inducing  landsmen 
to  reconsider  floating  bridges.  Draw- 
bridges then  came  in,  seventeen  of 
which  now  span  the  river  and  its 
branches.  Better  draw-bridges  than 
these  can  nowhere  be  found ;  but  the 
inconvenience  to  which  they  subject 
the  busy  "  Chicagonese "  (so  their 
rivals  style  them)  must  be  seen  to  be 
understood.  Unfavorable  winds  some- 
times detain  vessels  in  the  lake,  until 
three  hundred  of  them  are  waiting  to 
enter.  The  wind  changes  ;  the  whole 
fleet  comes  streaming  in ;  in  twelve 
hours,  three  hundred  vessels  are  tugged 
through  the  draw-bridges,  which  is  an 
average  of  more  than  two  a  minute. 
At  all  the  bridges,  and  on  both  sides 
of  them,  crowds  of  impatient  people, 
and  long  lines  of  vehicles  extending 
back  farther  than  the  eye  can  reach, 
are  waiting.  Now  and  then  the  bridges 
can  be  closed  for  a  short  time,  and 
then  tremendous  is  the  rush  to  cross. 
Often,  before  all  the  waiters  have  suc- 
ceeded in  getting  over,  the  bell  rings, 
the  bridge  is  cleared,  and  the  draw 
swings  open  to  admit  another  pro- 
cession of  vessels,  each  towed  by  a 
puffing  and  snorting  little  propeller. 
These  are  exceptional  days,  and  there 
are  other  exceptional  days  in  which 
the  bridges  are  seldom  opened.  But 
we  were  informed,  that  a  business  man 
who  has  any  important  appointment 
in  a  distant  part  of  the  town  allows 
one  hour  for  possible  detention  at  the 
bridges.  Omnibuses  leaving  the  ho- 
tels for  a  depot  a  quarter  of  a  mile  dis- 


336 


Chicago. 


[March, 


tant,  but  on  the  other  side  of  the  river, 
start  an  hour  before  the  departure  of 
the  train. 

All  this  inconvenience  will  soon  be 
a  thing  of  the  past.  Perhaps  before 
these  lines  are  read  the  first  tunnel 
under  the  river  will  have  been  opened. 
Others  will  be  at  once  begun. 

That  river,  which  is  not  a  river,  and 
because  it  is  not  a  river,  is  now  giving 
Chicago  another  opportunity  to  exert 
its  unconquerable  energy  and  resolu- 
tion. Into  this  forked  inlet,  all  the 
drainage  of  the  town  is  poured,  and 
there  is  no  current  to  carry  it  away 
into  the  lake.  Despite  incessant  dredg- 
ing, these  streams  of  impurity  fill  the 
channel,  and  convert  the  water  into  a 
liquid  resembling  in  color  and  con- 
sistency a  rich  pea-soup,  such  as  the 
benevolent  Farmer  ladles  out  so  plenti- 
fully to  the  poor  women  of  New  York. 
This  evil,  great  already,  must  increase 
as  rapidly  as  the  town  increases,  and 
might  in  time  render  the  place  unin- 
habitable. Chicago  is  now  expending 
two  or  three  millions  of  dollars  in 
changing  that  pool  of  abominations 
into  a  pure  and  running  stream.  The 
canal,  before  spoken  of,  which  connects  . 
Lake  Michigan  with  the  Illinois  River, 
begins  at  the  end  of  one  of  the  branches 
of  the  Chicago  River,  the  water  of 
which  is  now  pumped  up  into  the  canal 
by  steam.  This  canal  Chicago  is  deep- 
ening, so  that  the  water  of  the  river 
will  Jtow  into  it,  and  run  down  through 
all  its  length  to  the  Illinois,  and  so 
carry  away  the  impurities  of  the  town 
to  the  Mississippi.  Thus,  by  one 
operation,  the  pumping  is  obviated, 
the  canal  is  improved,  the  river  is  puri- 
fied, and  the  city  is  rendered  more 
salubrious.  The  Chicago  River  will 
at  length  become  a  river  ;  only,  it  will 
run  backwards. 

With  regard  to  that  two-mile  tunnel 
under  the  blue  lake,  by  which  its  purest 
water,  all  uncontaminated  by  the  town, 
will  soon  flow,  by  ten  thousand  rills, 
into  every  room  and  closet  of  the  place, 
it  is  not  Chicago's  fault  if  all  the  world 
does  not  understand  it.  Indeed,  we 
are    expressly   informed   by    a   guide- 


book, that,  "when  the  work  was  con- 
ceived, the  whole  civilized  world  was 
awed  by  the  magnitude  of  the  project." 
In  what  state  of  mind,  then,  will  the 
whole  civilized  world  find  itself,  when 
it  learns  that  a  work  of  such  magnitude 
was  executed  in  just  three  years,  at  a 
cost  of  less  than  a  million  dollars  ? 
The  work  is  really  something  to  be 
proud  of,  not  for  its  magnitude,  but 
for  the  simplicity,  originality,  and  bold- 
ness of  the  idea. 

Until  within  the  last  ten  years,  Chi- 
cago was  little  more  than  what  we 
have  previously  named  it,  —  the  great 
Northwestern  Exchange.  It  was  a 
buyer  and  a  seller  on  a  great  scale  :  but 
it  made  scarcely  anything,  depending 
upon  the  Eastern  States  for  supplies  of 
manufactured  merchandise.  Upon  this 
fact  was  founded  the  ridiculous  expec- 
tation, entertained  at  the  beginning  of 
the  late  war  by  the  enemies  of  the  Re- 
public, of  seeing  the  Western  States 
secede  from,  the  Union.  The  Western 
man,  however,  has  the  eminent  good 
fortune  of  not  being  a  fool.  Every 
business  man  in  Chicago  was  intelli- 
gent enough  to  know  that  this  depend- 
ence upon  the  East  was  a  necessity 
of  the  case  and  time.  Newly  settled 
countries  cannot  manufacture  their 
own  pins,  watches,  and  pianos,  nor 
even  their  own  boots,  overcoats,  and 
saucepans,  and  they  are  glad  enough 
to  give  other  communities  some  of 
their  surplus  produce  in  exchange  for 
those  articles.  But,  happily,  there  is 
free  trade  between  the  Eastern  and 
Western  States.  The  only  and  suffi- 
cient protective  tariff  imposed  upon 
that  trade  is  the  cost  of  transportation. 
Consequently,  we  find  that  just  as 
fast  as  it  is  best  for  both  sections  that 
the  West  should  cease  to  depend  upon 
the  East,  just  so  fast,  and  no  faster, 
Chicago  gets  into  manufacturing.  In 
all  the  history  of  business  there  can- 
not be  found  a  more  exquisite  illustra- 
tion of  the  harmonious  and  safe  work- 
ing of  untrammelled  trade.  At  first, 
Chicago  began  to  make  on  a  small 
scale  the  rough  and  heavy  implements 
of  husbandry.     That  great  factory,  for 


1867.] 


Chicago. 


337 


example,  which  now  produces  an  ex- 
cellent farm-wagon  every  seven  min- 
utes of  every  working  day,  was  founded 
twenty-three  years  ago  by  its  pro- 
prietor investing  all  his  capital  in  the 
slow  construction  of  one  wagon.  At 
the  present  time,  almost  every  article 
of  much  bulk  used  upon  railroads,  in 
farming,  in  warming  houses,  in  build- 
ing houses,  or  in  cooking,  is  made  in 
Chicago.  Three  thousand  persons  are 
now  employed  there  in  manufacturing 
coarse  boots  and  shoes.  The  prairie 
world  is  mowed  and  reaped  by  ma- 
chines made  in  Chicago,  whose  people 
are  feeling  their  way,  too,  into  making 
woollen  and  cotton  goods.  Four  or  five 
miles  out  on  the  prairie,  where  until 
last  May  the  ground  had  never  been 
broken  since  the  creation,  there  stands 
now  the  village  of  Austin,  which  consists 
of  three  large  factory  buildings,  forty 
or  fifty  nice  cottages  for  workmen,  and 
two  thousand  young  trees.  This  is  the 
seat  of  the  Chicago  Clock  Factory,  the 
superintendent  of  which  is  that  honest 
and  ingenious  man,  Chauncey  Jerome, 
the  inventor  of  most  of  the  wonderful 
machinery  by  which  American  clocks 
have  been  made  so  excellent  and  so 
cheap.  After  his  melancholy  failure  in 
Connecticut,  (wholly  through  the  fault 
of  others,  for  he  had  retired  from  active 
business,)  he  found  an  honorable  asy- 
lum here,  and  is  now  giving  to  this  es- 
tablishment the  benefit  of  his  fifty- 
five  years'  experience  in  clock-making. 
The  machinery  now  in  operation  can 
produce  one  hundred  thousand  clocks 
a  year ;  and  the  proprietors  had  re- 
ceived orders  for  eight  months'  prod- 
uct before  they  had  finished  one  clock. 
They  expect  to  be  able  to  sell  these 
clocks  at  New  Haven  quite  as  cheap 
as  those  made  in  New  Haven  ;  since 
nearly  every  metal  and  wood  employed 
in  the  construction  of  a  clock  can  be 
bought  cheaper  in  Chicago  than  in 
Connecticut.  A  few  miles  farther  back 
on  the  prairies,  at  Elgin,  there  is  the 
establishment  of  the  National  Watch 
Company,  which  expects  soon  to  pro- 
duce fifty  watches  a  day,  and  to  com- 
pete for  a  share  of  the  ten  or  eleven 
vol.  xix.  —  no.   113.  22 


millions  of  dollars  which  the  people 
of  America  pay  every  year  for  new 
watches.  They  are  beginning  to  make 
pianos  at  Chicago,  besides  selling  a 
hundred  a  week  of  those  made  in  the 
East ;  and  the  great  music  house  of 
Root  and  Cady  are  now  engraving  and 
printing  all  the  music  they  publish. 
Melodeons  are  made  in  Chicago  on 
a  great  scale. 

It  is  in  this  gradual  and  safe  manner 
that  trade  adjusts  itself  to  circumstan- 
ces when  it  is  untrammelled  by  law, 
and  such  will  be  the  working  of  free 
trade  in  all  the  nations  of  the  earth, 
when,  by  and  by,  all  the  nations  shall 
be  in  a  condition  to  adopt  it.  For  some 
years  to  come  —  so  long,  indeed,  as  the 
national  debt  is  our  king  —  we  shall 
have  to  approach  free  trade  with  slow 
and  cautious  steps  ;  but  we  need  not 
lose  sight  of  the  truth,  that  universal 
free  trade  is  the  consummation  at  which 
the  statesmanship  of  all  lands  is  to 
aim. 

Chicago  is  now  intent  upon  four 
things,  —  the  establishment  of  manufac- 
tures, the.  improvement  of  the  city,  the 
completion  of  railroads  to  the  Pacific, 
the  construction  of  ship  canals  from  the 
Mississippi  to  the  Atlantic  Ocean.  He 
who  can  lend  a  helping  hand  or  head  to 
any  of  these  is  welcome,  and  especially 
he  who  can  make  any  useful  article 
well.  There,  as  everywhere,  mere  buy- 
ers and  sellers  are  in  excess.  Those 
"  Commercial  Colleges  "  which  abound 
in  all  the  Western  cities,  useful  as  they 
are  in  many  respects,  appear  to  be  lur- 
ing young  men  from  their  proper  voca- 
tion of  producers  and  makers  into  the 
overcrowded  business  of  distributing ; 
so  that  even  in  busy  Chicago,  where 
every  able  man  is  doing  two  men's 
work,  the  merchants  are  pestered  with 
applications  for  clerkships,  and  the  sala- 
ries of  clerks  are  generally  low.  These 
waiting  youths  are  the  only  idle  class 
in  Chicago.  There  are  no  men  of  lei- 
sure there.  No  man  thinks  of  stopping 
work  because  he  has  money  enough  for 
his  personal  use.  In  all  the  Western 
country,  as  a  rule,  the  richer  a  man  is, 
the  harder  he  toils,  and  the  more  com- 


338 


Chicago. 


[March, 


pletely  is  he  the  servant  of  his  fellow- 
citizens. 

Chicago,  already  a  handsome  town, 
is  going  to  be  one  of  the  most  beautiful 
cities  in  the  world.  Twenty  years  ago, 
when  the  present  court-house,  or  City 
Hall,  was  built,  the  corporation  sent 
all  the  way  to  Lockport,  in  the  State 
of  New  York,  for  the  stone,  —  a  dark 
granite.  Long  before  the  people  had 
done  boasting  of  this  grand  and  gloomy 
edifice,  the  men  who  were  digging  the 
canal  at  Athens,  a  point  about  four- 
teen miles  from  the  city,  struck  a  de- 
posit of  soft,  cream-colored  stone,  which 
proved  to  be  an  inexhaustible  quar- 
ry. For  some  time  this  stone  was  sup- 
posed to  be  useless,  and  it  was  re- 
garded only  in  the  light  of  an  obstruc- 
tion to  the  excavation  of  the  canal.  It 
was  discovered,  a  year  or  two  after,  that 
fragments  of  the  stone  which  had  been 
exposed  to  the  air  for  a  few  months  had 
become  harder ;  and  by  very  slow  de- 
grees the  truth  dawned  upon  a  few  in- 
terested minds,  that  Chicago  had  stum- 
bled upon  a  treasure.  It  was,  never- 
ertheless,  with  much  difficulty  that  build- 
ers were  induced  to  give  a  trial  to  what 
is  now  recognized  as  the  very  best  and 
most  elegant  building  material  in  the 
country.  Soft  to  the  chisel,  it  is  hard 
in  the  finished  wall ;  and,  devoid  of  the 
glare  of  white  marble,  it  possesses  that 
hue  of  the  Parthenon  which,  Dr.  Words- 
worth says,  looks  as  though  it  had  been 
"quarried  out  of  the  golden  light  of  an 
Athenian  sunset."  The  general  use  in 
Chicago  of  this  light-colored  stone,  and 
of  the  light  yellow  brick  of  the  prairie 
clay,  gives  to  the  principal  streets  a 
cheerful,  airy,  elegant  aspect,  which  is 
enhanced  by  the  promptitude  with  which 
all  the  new  and  pleasing  effects  in  street 
architecture  are  introduced.  The  West- 
ern man,  in  all  that  he  does,  and  in 
much  tha't  he  thinks,  is  the  creature  of 
all  the  earth  who  is  least  trammelled  by 
custom  and  tradition.  His  ruling  aim, 
when  he  sets  about  anything,  is  to  do  it 
better  than  the  same  thing  has  ever 
been  done  before  since  the  creation  of 
man.  We  do  not  hesitate  to  say,  that 
the  best  houses  in  the  leading  avenues 


of  Chicago  are  far  more  pleasing  to  the 
eye  than  those  of  the  Fifth  Avenue  in 
New  York,  and  that  the  general  effect 
of  the  best  streets  is  finer. 

Of  course,  Chicago  is  still  a  forming 
city.  It  stretches  along  the  lake  about 
eight  miles,  but  does  not  reach  back 
into  the  prairie  more  than  two.  In  the 
heart  of  the  town  the  stranger  beholds 
blocks  of  stores,  solid,  lofty,  and  in  the 
most  recent  taste,  hotels  of  great  mag- 
nitude, and  public  buildings  that  would 
be  creditable  to  an)<  city.  The  streets 
are  as  crowded  with  vehicles  and  peo- 
ple as  any  in  New  York,  and  there  is 
nothing  exhibited  in  the  windows  of 
New  York  which  may  not  be  seen  in 
those  of  Chicago.  As  the  visitor  pass- 
es along,  he  sees  at  every  moment  some 
new  evidence  that  he  has  arrived  at  a 
rich  metropolis.  Now  it  is  a  gorgeous 
and  enormous  carpet-house  that  arrests 
his  attention  ;  now  a  huge  dry-goods 
store,  or  vast  depot  of  groceries.  The 
next  moment  he  finds  himself  peering 
into  a  restaurant,  as  splendid  as  a  steam- 
boat and  larger  than  Taylor's  ;  or  into 
a  dining-room  window,  where,  in  addi- 
tion to  other  delicacies  of  the  season, 
there  is  a  spacious  cake  of  ice,  covered 
with  naked  frogs,  reposing  picturesque- 
ly in  parsley.  Farther  on,  he  pauses 
before  a  jeweller's,  brilliant  with  gold, 
silver,  diamonds,  and  pictures,  where  a 
single  item  of  last  year's  business  was 
the  sale  of  three  thousand  two  hundred 
watches,  of  which  one  thousand  were 
American.  The  number  and  extent  of 
the  book-stores  is  another  striking  fea- 
ture, and  it  is  impossible  to  go  far  with- 
out being  strongly  reminded  that  pianos 
and  cabinet-organs  are  for  sale  in  the 
city.  Blessed  are  the  people  of  Chicago, 
and  blessed  the  strangers  in  their  midst, 
in  the  article  of  malt  liquor  ;  for  it  is 
excellent,  it  is  honest,  and  it  is  abun- 
dant. True,  science  has  not  yet  posi- 
tively ascertained  whether  or  not  the 
Coming  Man  will  drink  malt  liquor ; 
but  the  Coming  Man  has  not  come,  and 
if  people  will  drink  beer,  they  had  better 
drink  it  good. 

Along  the  lake,  south  of  the  river,  for 
two  or  three  miles,  extend  the  beautiful 


1 867.] 


Chicago. 


339 


avenues  which  change  insensibly  into 
those  streets  of  cottages  and  gardens 
which  have  given  to  Chicago  the  name 
of  the  Garden  City.  This  is  a  pleasant, 
umbrageous  quarter,  where  glimpses  are 
caught  of  the  blue  lake  that  stretches 
away  to  the  east  for  sixty  miles.  On 
this  shore  is  rising  the  monument  to 
Douglas,  and  there  is  a  shady  street 
near  by  that  will  last  longer  than  the 
monument,  called  Douglas  Place.  In 
all  Chicago  there  is  not  one  tenement 
house.  Thrifty  workmen  own  the  houses 
they  live  in,  and  the  rest  can  still  hire  a 
whole  house ;  consequently  seven  tenths 
of  Chicago  consist  of  small  wooden 
houses,  in  streets  with  wooden  side- 
walks and  roadways  of  prairie  black. 

It  is  always  interesting  to  a  stranger 
to  notice  the  names  of  the  streets  of  a 
town  which  he  visits  for  the  first  time. 
Chicago  boasts  a  Goethe  Street  and  a 
Schiller  Street.  There  is  also  a  Gree- 
ley, a  Bremer,  a  Poe,  a  Kane,  a  Kos- 
suth, a  Bross,  a  Wentworth,  and  a  Long 
John  Street.  Local  history  is  com- 
memorated in  Calumet,  Astor,  Fur,  Kin- 
sie,  Blackhawk,  and  Wahpanseh ;  and 
general  history,  in  Blucher,  Bonaparte, 
Buena  Vista,  Calhoun,  Burnside,  Cass, 
De  Kalb,  Carroll,  Fabius,  Macedonia, 
Garibaldi,  Madison,  Washington,  Mon- 
roe, Lafayette,  Franklin,  Butler,  Grant, 
Kansas,  Lincoln,  Mayflower,  Napoleon, 
Randolph,  Sigel,  and  Thomas.  New 
York  is  called  to  mind  in  Broadway, 
the  Bowery,  and  the  Bloomingdale 
Road;  and  Philadelphia,  in  Chestnut 
Street.  There  is  likewise  a  Rosebud 
Street,  a  Selah  Street,  a  Queer  Place, 
and  a  Grub  Street. 

When  next  the  Atlantic  Monthly 
chronicles  the  progress  of  Chicago,  it 
will  have  to  describe  a  grand  Boule- 
vard, furnishing  a  drive  of  fifteen  miles 
round  the  city,  shaded  with  trees,  and 
lined  with  villas  and  gardens.  This 
very  spring,  it  is  hoped,  will  see  the 
work  begun.  A  great  park  is  also  in 
contemplation,  in  which  Chicago  hopes 
to  behold  the  strange  spectacle  of  hill 
and  dale.  It  is  not  unlikely  that  the 
park  will  enclose  a  range  of  mountains, 
the  loftiest  peaks  of  which  will  pierce 


the  air  half  a  hundred  feet ;  and  up 
those  giddy  heights  Chicago's  boys  will 
climb  on  Saturday  afternoons,  inhale 
the  breath  of  liberty  on  the  mountain- 
tops,  and  learn  why  Switzerland  is  free. 
Would  the  stranger  see  the  men 
whose  public  spirit  and  energy  have 
created  Chicago,  and  are  guiding  its 
destinies  ?  Then  he  must  go,  about 
noon,  to  the  beautiful  edifice  in  the 
centre  of  the  city,  wherein  the  Board, 
of  Trade  assembles.  This  is  the  Ex- 
change of  Chicago.  Here,  in  a  spa- 
cious and  lofty  apartment,  decorated 
with  fine  fresco  paintings  by  resi- 
dent Italian  artists,  are  daily  gathered 
from  a  thousand  to  eighteen  hundred 
of  the  men  who  control  the  collection 
and  distribution  of  those  grain  moun- 
tains, those  miles  of  timber  stacks,  and 
all  that  mass  of  produce  of  which  we 
have  spoken.  Here  are  the  buyers, 
the  sellers,  the  insurers,  and  the  for- 
warders, and  loud  is  the  roar  of  their 
talk.  Groups  of  men  cover  the  whole 
extent  of  the  floor.  A  few  minutes 
suffice  to  buy,  insure,  and  despatch  a 
ship-load  of  wheat ;  a  few  minutes 
suffice  to  convert  a  sanguine  speculator 
into  the  lamest  of  ducks,  or  send  him 
away  rejoicing  in  the  possession  of  new 
means  of  speculation.  Suddenly,  loud 
knocks  are  heard  in  a  gallery  above, 
which  commands  a  view  of  the  whole 
scene.  The  roar  is  instantly  hushed, 
and  all  eyes  and  all  ears  are  directed  to- 
ward a  gentleman  in  the  gallery,  who  is 
Mr.  John  F.  Beaty,  the  Secretary  of  the 
Board,  who  proceeds,  in  a  sonorous 
voice,  to  read  the  last  telegram  of  prices 
in  New  York  and  London.  The  instant 
he  has  finished,  conversation  sets  in 
with  renewed  vigor ;  and  the  whole  hall 
is  filled  with  noise.  At  a  semicircle 
of  mahogany  desks  at  one  end  of  the 
room  sit  the  gentlemen  representing 
the  press,  who  compile  daily  reports  of 
the  business  of  the  city,  which  for  com- 
pleteness and  extent  are  unequalled. 
In  about  an  hour  and  a  half  the  busi- 
ness of  the  day  is  done,  and  the  room  is 
empty,  with  half  an  inch  of  grain  on  the 
floor,  ready  bruised  for  the  janitor's  pig 
and  chickens. 


34Q 


Chicago. 


[March, 


No  body  of  men  in  this  land  were 
more  heartily  loyal  to  their  country 
during  the  war  than  the  Chicago  Board 
of  Trade.  Adjoining  the  great  ex- 
change-room is  a  smaller  apartment, 
handsomely  furnished  in  black  walnut, 
for  the  meetings  of  the  Directors  of 
the  Board ;  and  in  this  room  are  pre- 
served the  flags  of  the  several  regiments 
raised  or  equipped  under  the  auspices 
and  by  the  assistance  of  the  Board. 
It  so  chanced,  that  while  we  were  in 
the  great  room,  a  few  weeks  ago,  Mr. 
Walter,  of  the  London  Times,  passed 
through  it,  unobserved,  escorted  by 
Governor  Bross,  of  the  Chicago  Trib- 
une, who  usually  does  the  honors  of 
the  city  —  and  no  one  could  do  them 
more  agreeably  or  more  intelligently 
—  to  visitors  of  distinction.  When  it 
transpired  who  it  was  that  had  ac- 
companied Governor  Bross,  a  difficult 
moral  problem  was  discussed  by  some 
of  those  exceedingly  uncompromising 
loyalists.  The  question  was,  Suppose 
Mr.  Walter  had  been  recognized,  which 
ought  to  have  been  the  controlling  prin- 
ciple in  the  minds  of  those  present,  — 
courtesy  to  a  stranger,  or  disapproval 
of  a  public  enemy  ?  In  other  words, 
would  it  have  been  right  and  becom- 
ing in  the  Board  of  Trade  to  have 
hissed  Mr.  Walter  a  little  ?  From  the 
tone  of  the  remarks  upon  this  abstruse 
question  of  morals,  we  fear  that,  if  Mr. 
Walter  had  been  generally  recognized, 
he  would  not  have  been  left  in  doubt  as 
to  the  feelings  of  the  Board  toward  a 
man  who,  the  Board  thought,  gave  us 
two  years  more  of  war  than  we  should 
have  had  if  he  had  not  led  England 
against  us.  Those  radical  and  straight- 
forward men  of  wheat  and  wool  do  not, 
perhaps,  sufficiently  consider  that  the 
great  journals  of  the  world  are  the 
world's  paid  servants,  who  seem  to  lead, 
but  are  in  reality  propelled. 

The  great  question  respecting  Chi- 
cago, —  and  all  other  places  under 
heaven,  —  is,  What  is  the  quality  of  the 
human  life  lived  in  it?  It  is  well  to 
have  an  abundance  of  beef,  pork,  grain, 
wool,  and  pine  boards,  so  long  as  these 
are  used  as  means  to  an  end,  and  that 


end  is  the  production  and  nurture  of 
happy,  intelligent,  virtuous,  and  robust 
human  beings.  This  alone  is  success  ; 
all  short  of  this  is  failure.  Cheerful, 
healthy  human  life,  — that  is  the  wealth 
of  the  world  ;  and  the  extreme  of  desti- 
tution is  to  have  all  the  rest  and  not 
that.  The  stranger,  therefore,  looks 
about  in  this  busy,  thriving  city,  and 
endeavors  to  ascertain,  above  all  else, 
how  it  fares  there  with  human  nature. 
In  Chicago,  as  everywhere,  human  na- 
ture is  weak  and  ignorant,  temptable 
and  tempted  ;  and  in  considering  the 
influences  to  which  it  is  there  subjected, 
we  must  only  ask  whether  those  influ- 
ences are  more  or  less  favorable  than 
elsewhere. 

The  climate,  upon  the  whole,  is  good. 
The  winters,  short,  sharp,  and  decisive, 
are  healthful,  of  course.  The  sum- 
mer heats  are  mitigated  by  the  prairie 
breezes  and  the  fresh  cool  winds  from 
the  lake.  Occasionally  a  southern  wind 
prevails,  and  gives  Chicago  some  sti- 
fling days.  To  those  who  can  afford  it, 
the  northern  lakes  offer  an  easy  and 
complete  escape  from  the  hot  weather, 
as  well  as  a  trip  of  almost  unequalled 
variety  and  charm.  With  regard  to 
food,  Chicago  has  the  pick  of  the  best ; 
nothing  remains  but  to  learn  how  to 
cook  it.  The  West  has  much  to  acquire 
in  this  great  art,  and  even  many  of  the 
large  hotels  are  wanting  in  their  mis- 
sion of  setting  an  example  of  cookery. 
The  raw  material  abounds.  It  is  only 
necessary  not  to  spoil  it  with  grease, 
saleratus,  and  the  lazy,  odious  frying- 
pan.  We  are  happy  to  state,  that  ex- 
cellent dinners  are  daily  enjoyed  in 
Chicago,  though  a  prodigious  number 
of  bad  ones  are  bolted. 

Some  parts  of  the  mind  are  well  cul- 
tivated there.  Chicago  is  itself  a  col- 
lege to  all  its  inhabitants.  When  we 
see  a  boy  reading  in  Roman  history  an 
account  of  the  Appian  Way,  we  all  say 
that  he  is  improving  his  mind.  The 
Nicholson  pavement  has  ten  times 
more  thought  in  it  than  the  Appian 
Way ;  why  is  not  an  urchin  improving 
his  mind  who  stands,  with  his  hands  in 
his  pockets,  looking  on  while  the  work- 


1 86;.] 


Chicago. 


341 


•Wis 


men  arrange  the  little  blocks  and  pour 
in  the  odorous  tar  ?  Then  those  mighty 
schemes  for  ship  canals,  and  new,  far- 
reaching  railroads,  and  the  improved 
methods,  processes,  models,  —  all  these 
are  the  daily  theme  of  conversation  and 
keen  discussion,  with  maps  spread  out 
and  authorities  at  hand.  A  great  and 
splendid  city  is  rising  from  the  prai- 
rie, in  the  view  of  all  the  people,  who 
watch,  criticise,  compare,  suggest.  It  is 
observed  that  the  too  respectable  Bos- 
tonian,  the  staid  Philadelphian,  the  self- 
indulgent  and  thoughtless  New-Yorker, 
acquire,  after  living  awhile  in  Chicago, 
a  vivacity  of  mind,  an  interest  in  things 
around  them,  a  public  spirit,  which  they 
did  not  possess  at  home.  It  must  be 
very  difficult  for  a  boy  to  grow  up  a 
fool  in  a  Western  city,  unless,  indeed, 
he  takes  to  vice,  which,  there  and  every- 
where, is  deadly  to  the  understanding. 
It  is  with  pleasure  that  we  report  to 
the  people  of  the  United  States,  that 
their  fellow-citizens  of  Chicago  are  look- 
ing well  to  the  interests  of  those  who 
are  to  carry  on  their  work  when  they  are 
gone.  The  public  schools  of  the  city 
are  among  the  very  best  in  the  United 
States.  The  buildings  are  large,  hand- 
some, and  convenient ;  much  care  is 
taken  with  regard  to  the  ventilation  of 
the  rooms  and  the  exercise  of  the  pu- 
pils ;  the  salaries  of  the  teachers  range 
from  four  hundred  to  twenty-four  hun- 
dred dollars  a  year ;  the  gentlemen  of 
the  Board  of  Education  are  among  the 
most  respectable  and  capable  of  the 
citizens.  In  the  High  School,  an  insti- 
tution of  which  any  city  in  Christen- 
dom might  be  justly  proud,  colored  lads 
and  girls  may  be  seen  in  most  of  the 
classes,  mingled  with  the  other  pupils  ; 
and  in  the  evening  schools  of  the  city 
colored  men  and  women  are  received 
on  precisely  the  same  footing  as  white. 
Colored  children  also  attend  the  com- 
mon schools,  and  no  one  objects,  or  sees 
anything  extraordinary  in  the  fact.  No 
little  child  is  allowed  to  pass  more  than 
half  an  hour  without  exercise.  In  the 
higher  classes,  the  physical  exercises 
occur  about  once  an  hour ;  the  win- 
dows are  thrown  open,  the  pupils  rise, 


and  all  the  class  imitate  the  motions 
of  the  teacher  for  five  minutes.  The 
boys  in  the  High  School  have  a  lesson 
daily  in  out-door  gymnastics,  skilfully 
taught  by  a  gentleman  who  left  one  of 
his  legs  before  Vicksburg.  The  girls 
have  a  variety  of  curious  exercises, 
which  combine  play  and  work  in  an 
agreeable  manner.  Connected  with  the 
High  School,  there  is  a  small  school  of 
young  children,  for  the  purpose  of  giv- 
ing young  ladies  who  intend  to  become 
teachers  an  opportunity  of  practice, 
under  the  direction  of  a  teacher  already 
experienced.  If  in  one  room  we  re- 
gretted to  see  boys  and  girls  expending 
their  force  in  acquiring  a  smattering  of 
Latin,  we  were  consoled  in  another  by 
discovering  that  those  who  are  wise 
enough  to  prefer  it  can  learn  German 
or  French. 

The  peril  of  America  is  the  over- 
schooling  of  her  children.  In  Chicago, 
as  everywhere  else,  the  grand  fault  of 
the  public  schools  is,  that  too  much  is 
attempted  in  them.  The  Board  of  Edu- 
cation is  ambitious  ;  the  superintend- 
ent is  ambitious  ;  the  teachers,  the  par- 
ents, the  children,  are  ambitious ;  and 
there  is  nowhere  in  the  system  any  one 
who  stands  between  these  co-operating 
ambitions  and  the  delicate  organiza- 
tion of  the  children.  Five  hours'  school 
a  day,  with  two  hours'  intermission,  and 
no  lessons  learned  at  home, — these 
are  our  colors,  and  we  nail  them  to  the 
mast.  Even  on  Sundays  the  poor  chil- 
dren have  no  rest  from  eternal  school 
and  the  stimulating  influence  of  older 
minds. 

Three  medical  colleges,  two  theologi- 
cal seminaries,  a  university,  an  acad- 
emy of  sciences,  —  all  in  their  infancy, 
but  full  of  young  vigor,  —  exist  in  Chi- 
cago. It  is  startling  to  find  on  the 
western  shore  of  Lake  Michigan,  where, 
thirty-two  years  ago,  seven  thousand  In- 
dians howled,  an  astronomical  observa- 
tory of  the  most  improved  model,  pro- 
vided with  a  telescope  which  is  consid- 
ered the  finest  of  its  kind  in  the  world, 
and  a  resident  professor  capable  of 
using  it.  Chicago  will  have  a  museum 
before  New  York  has  one.     Nine  vears 


342 


Chicago. 


[March, 


ago,  a  few  gentlemen  interested  in  sci- 
ence, particularly  in  natural  history  and 
geology,  formed  a  society  for  the  col- 
lection of  specimens  and  the  acquisi- 
tion of  knowledge.  A  year  or  two  since, 
it  occurred  to  one  or  two  of  the  more 
zealous  members  that  the  time  had 
come  for  the  society  to  take  a  step  for' 
ward.  The  merchants  of  Chicago  have 
a  finely  developed  talent  for  subscrib- 
ing money,  and  before  many  days  had 
gone  by  one  hundred  and  twenty  men 
had  subscribed  five  hundred  dollars 
each,  for  the  purpose  of  establishing  on 
a  proper  basis  the  Chicago  Academy  of 
Sciences.  A  lot  has  been  purchased  ; 
a  building  will  be  begun  in  the  spring ; 
and  Chicago  will  have  a  museum  before 
the  year  is  out.  Already  the  society 
possesses  many  objects  of  particular 
interest,  —  among  others,  a  specimen  of 
the  prairie  squirrels  that  cannot  climb, 
which  ought  to  be  put  in  the  same 
case  with  the  eyeless  fish  of  the  Mam- 
moth Cave. 

The  daily  mental  food  of  the  business 
men  in  Western  cities  is  the  daily  news- 
paper ;  and  many  of  them  read  nothing 
else.  The  daily  press  of  Chicago  is 
conducted  with  the  vigor,  enterprise, 
and  liberality  of  expenditure  which  we 
should  expect  to  see  in  a  city  pervaded 
with  the  spirit  of  advertising.  Read- 
ers have  not  forgotten  General  Butler's 
famous  apple -speech  in  front  of  the 
City  Hall  in  New  York,  a  few  months 
ago,  the  report  of  which  filled  nearly 
two  columns  of  the  New  York  papers. 
It  was  telegraphed,  with  all  the  re- 
marks and  doings  of  the  crowd,  to  "  The 
Chicago  Republican."  "The  Chicago 
Tribune "  has  excellent  "  own  corre- 
spondents "  in  New  York,  London,  Par- 
is, and  Washington,  besides  occasional 
contributors  in  twenty  other  cities.  On 
almost  any  day  of  the  year,  this  excel- 
lent newspaper  publishes  telegraphic 
news  from  as  many  as  twenty-five 
points,  and  on  extraordinary  occa- 
sions the  number  of  despatches  has 
risen  to  seventy-five.  In  the  office  of 
the  Republican  is  kept  a  list  of  seven 
hundred  and  sixty  names  of  persons 
residing   in  different   towns,   to  whom 


the  editor  can  send  for  detailed  infor- 
mation when  anything  of  interest  has 
occurred  within  their  reach.  If  the 
Mammoth  Cave  should  cave  in,  or  Ni- 
agara break  down,  there  would  be  some 
one  on  the  spot,  an  hour  after,  col- 
lecting details  of  the  catastrophe  for 
the  Chicago  Republican  of  the  next 
morning.  "The  Evening  Journal,"  too, 
though  it  cannot  compete  with  morn- 
ing papers  in  point  of  news,  presents 
a  singularly  well-digested  and  tastefully 
selected  variety  of  interesting  reading. 

The  press  of  Chicago  has  opinions  of 
its  own.  The  Tribune,  unlike  its  great 
New  York  namesake,  inclines  toward 
free  trade.  We  believe  the  editors  are 
prepared  to  recommend  that  the  pol- 
icy of  protection  should  be  carried  no 
farther,  and  that  future  changes  made 
in  the  tariff  should  lessen  restrictions 
upon  trade,  not  increase  them.  The 
young  Republican,  on  the  contrary,  is  a 
thorough-going  protectionist.  At  least, 
it  believes  that  the  policy  of  protec- 
tion should  be  maintained  until  Chi- 
cago has  her  manufacturing  system 
well  developed.  Both  these  papers 
and  the  Evening  Journal  are  radical 
Republican.  Indeed,  we  may  say  that, 
in  the  Western  country,  the  vast  ma- 
jority of  Republicans  are  of  the  most 
radical  description.  "  The  Chicago 
Times "  is  the  leading  Democratic 
paper  of  the  Northwest,  but  it  advo- 
cates "impartial  suffrage,"  as  well  as 
universal  amnesty.  It  was  the  first 
paper  of  its  party  that  had  the  ability  to 
see  that  the  one  chance  of  the  Demo- 
cratic party's  regaining  power  was  to 
give  the  suffrage  to  the  great  mass  of 
the  negroes  immediately.  Ignorance 
is  ignorance.  Ignorance,  always  gravi- 
tating the  wrong  way,  can  be  cajoled 
and  bought.  It  is  the  demagogue's 
natural  prey;  honest  men  cannot  get 
near  enough  to  it  for  a  shot.  What  a 
reproach  to  Tammany,  that  a  politician 
in  far-off  Chicago  should  have  been  the 
first  to  see  the  mode  of  New-Yorkizing 
the  politics  of  the  South  ! 

The  community  that  possesses  a 
large  surplus  of  beef,  pork,  grain,  wool, 
and  timber,  can  have  whatever  other 


1867.] 


Chicago. 


343 


purchasable  commodity  it  desires.  To 
Chicago,  accordingly,  painters  come 
and  paint  pictures  for  its  parlors,  or 
send  them  from  afar.  There  is  a  sur- 
prising taste  there  for  every  kind  of 
artistic  decoration.  It  is  more  com- 
mon to  see  good  engravings  and  tol- 
erable paintings  in  the  residences  of 
Chicago  than  in  those  of  New  York. 
In  a  window  of  one  of  the  stores,  we 
noticed  a  very  pretty  statue  of  the  boy 
Washington,  executed  by  a  resident 
sculptor.  And  we  agree  with  the  pos- 
sessor of  the  Crosby  Opera  House,  that 
he  has  just  drawn  in  the  lottery  the 
most  elegant  interior  in  the  country. 
We  abhor  superlatives,  but  we  must 
claim  the  privilege  of  asserting,  that,  in 
the  construction  of  buildings  designed 
for  the  assembling  together  of  many 
people,  Chicago  surpasses  the  rest  of 
the  world.  There  are,  positively,  no 
churches  anywhere  else  in  which  ele- 
gance and  convenience  are  so  perfectly 
combined  as  in  the  newer  churches  of 
Chicago.  That  beautiful  Opera  House 
wants  nothing  but  an  opera.  We  heard 
within  it,  however,  one  of  the  concerts 
of  the  Philharmonic  Society,  at  which 
the  violin  playing  of  Camilla  Urso 
was  listened  to  with  rapture,  while  an 
abstruse  symphony,  performed  by  a 
German  orchestra,  was  borne  with  the 
patient  faith  which  we  Northern  bar- 
barians generally  exhibit  on  such  oc- 
casions. We  firmly  believe  the  music  is 
sublime  ;  we  are  ashamed  that  we  can- 
not enjoy  it ;  and  now  and  then,  when 
the  orchestra  plays  a  little  louder  than 
usual,  we  wake  from  a  revery,  and 
almost  persuade  ourselves  that  we  are 
receiving  pleasure.  As  in  New  York, 
so  in  Chicago.  Only,  the  politer  Chi- 
cago gentlemen  do  not  talk,  nor  the 
ladies  giggle. 

But  Chicago  does  more  than  listen 
patiently  to  foreign  artists.  It  has 
music  of  its  own.  Those  war-songs, 
which  cheered  ten  thousand  camp-fires, 
and  solaced  many  a  weary  march,  — 
*'  Tramp,  tramp,  tramp,  the  boys  are 
marching,"  "  The  Battle  Cry  of  Free- 
dom," "  Kingdom  Coming,"  "  Wake, 
Nicodemus,"  and  twenty  others,  famil- 


iar to  the  army  and  country,  —  were 
composed,  printed,  and  published  in 
Chicago.  That  worthy  gentleman,  Mr. 
George  F.  Root,  of  the  firm  of  Root 
and  Cady,  composed  several  of  the 
best  of  them.  Mr.  H.  C.  Work,  con- 
nected with  the  same  house,  is  the 
author  of  others,  some  of  which  had  a 
wonderful  run.  Now,  reader,  mark 
how  time  brings  its  revenges  !  Many 
years  ago,  Alonzo  Work,  father  of  this 
composer,  was  walking  along  a  road  in 
Missouri,  when  he  was  overtaken  by  a 
party  of  fugitive  slaves,  who  asked  the 
way  to  a  free  State.  He  directed  them 
on  their  course,  and  gave  them  some 
slight  aid  in  money.  For  doing  this, 
he  was  condemned  to  twenty  years' 
imprisonment  at  hard  labor,  and  served 
several  years  of  the  term  before  he  was 
pardoned.  In  1861,  his  son,  a  poor 
invalid  journeyman  printer,  climbed  up 
to  Mr.  Root's  study,  and  laid  upon  his 
desk  the  music  and  words  of  a  war 
song.  Astonished  that  so  forlorn  an 
apparition  should  have  ever  had  a 
thought  of  music  in  his  soul,  Mr. 
Root  was  still  more  astonished  to  dis- 
cover that  he  had  a  genius  for  pro- 
ducing such  music  as  the  people  love. 
Before  he  left  the  room  he  had  engaged 
to  compose  for  Messrs.  Root  and  Cady 
for  five  years.  His  songs  have  been 
sung  by  millions  of  men,  and  he  now 
has  a  pleasant  cottage,  paid  for,  and  an 
income  from  copyrights  of  three  thou- 
sand dollars  a  year. 

Such  books,  too,  as  the  people  of 
Chicago  and  the  Northwest  are  buy- 
ing !  Already  three  large  book-houses 
are  competing  to  supply  the  demand  of 
this  great  market.  The  most  attrac- 
tive, as  well  as  the  most  promising,  in- 
dication of  the  healthful  progress  of 
Chicago  is  given  in  the  quantities  and 
character  of  the  books  offered  for  sale. 

The  book-houses,  the  shelves  of 
which  are  crowded  with  the  best  lit- 
erature, are  not  exotic.  They  come  in 
obedience  to  the  law  of  demand  and 
supply.  All  our  leading  publishing 
houses  have  their  lists  of  publications 
completely  represented,  and  Chicago 
itself  is  rapidly  becoming  second  only 


;44 


Chicago. 


[March, 


to  New  York  as  a  distributing  point. 
The  demand  for  foreign  books,  for 
costly  books,  for  valuable  books,  is 
very  great.  You  see  in  these  large 
establishments  an  assortment  almost 
as  large  and  valuable  as  is  to  be  found 
in  any  of  our  Atlantic  cities.  Here 
have  been  sold  over  fifteen  hundred 
sets  of  Appleton's  Encyclopaedia,  in 
sixteen  volumes  ;  and  into  this  mar- 
ket several  hundred  sets  of  the  En- 
cyclopaedia Britannica,  in  twenty -two 
volumes,  worth  two  hundred  dollars  a 
set,  have  found  their  way.  We  were 
surprised  to  find  here  such  works,  for 
example,  as  Robertson's  Holy  Land, 
the  works  of  Sir  Joshua  Reynolds,  of 
Hogarth,  Gilray,  Dore,  Jameson,  My- 
rick,  and  many  others,  at  prices  vary- 
ing from  one  hundred  to  four  hundred 
and  fifty  dollars  each.  We  were  sur- 
prised, too,  to  read  in  a  Chicago  news- 
paper the  programme  of  a  course  of 
twenty-four  lectures  to  be  delivered  in 
the  French  language.  Allied  to  the 
book  business  is  the  news  business, 
which  is  not  the  least  among  the  note- 
worthy things  of  this  city.  The  busi- 
ness itself  is  an  outgrowth  of  the  ex- 
press business,  which,  by  its  ramifica- 
tions and  punctuality,  has,  notwith- 
standing its  extortionate  charges,  been 
a  great  public  servant.  The  express 
has  opened  in  almost  every  town,  cer- 
tainly in  almost  every  respectable  vil- 
lage, a  news  stand ;  and  the  influence 
of  these  cheap  establishments  in  the 
diffusion  of  intelligence,  as  well  as 
this  other  function,  the  provision  of  a 
peculiar  class  of  cheap  literature,  it  will 
be  the  duty  of  some  future  historian  to 
determine. 

The  railroads  running  out  from  Chi- 
cago have  given  every  facility  to  the 
development  of  the  news  business, 
and  accordingly  there  has  grown  up  in 
the  city  a  very  large  and  most  admi- 
rably conducted  establishment,  —  the 
Western  News  Company,  under  the 
management  of  its  founder,  Mr.  John 
R.  Walsh.  It  is,  we  believe,  less  than 
ten  years  since  this  establishment  was 
started,  in  a  small  way,  by  Mr.  Walsh, 
then  a  young  man  with  a  very  limited 


capital.  It  is  now  one  of  the  institu- 
tions of  Chicago,  and  transacts  a  busi- 
ness of  nearly  three  quarters  of  a  mil- 
lion of  dollars  a  year.  Hardly  one  of 
those  trains  that  leave  the  city  every 
fifteen  minutes  but  takes  out  to  other 
places  some  of  its  parcels.  Hardly  a 
cabin  in  the  Northwest  that  is  beyond 
the  reach  of  its  influence.  Hardly  a  fam- 
ily that  is  not  indebted  to  it  for  a  cheer- 
ful visit  during  the  week  or  month. 

The  truth  is,  that  much  of  the  best 
young  brain,  taste,  and  civilization  of 
the  country  has  gone  to  the  Northwest ; 
and  Chicago,  besides  supplying  it  with 
an  annual  fifty  millions  of  dollars'  worth 
of  dry  goods,  and  no  end  of  boards,  has 
to  minister  to  its  nobler  needs,  and 
distribute  over  the  country  five  millions 
of  dollars'  worth  of  books.  At  Chicago 
the  other  day,  fifty  graduates  of  Yale, 
all  residents  of  the  city,  were  gathered 
about  one  table. 

The  traveller  who  stays  over  a  Sun- 
day in  Chicago  witnesses  as  complete 
a  suspension  of  labor  as  in  Boston  or 
Philadelphia.  A  great  majority  of  the 
eager  and  busy  population  on  that  day 
resigns  itself  to  the  influence  of  its  in- 
structors ;  and  the  hundred  and  fifty 
churches  are  well  filled  with  attentive 
people.  There  are  nine  Baptist,  six 
Congregational,  eleven  Episcopal,  ten 
Lutheran,  eighteen  Methodist,  sixteen 
Presbyterian,  two  Dutch  Reformed,  fif- 
teen Catholic,  two  Swedenborgian,  two 
Unitarian,  and  two  Universalist  church- 
es, besides  various  mission  churches 
and  a  few  others  that  decline  classi- 
fication, and  four  Synagogues.  The 
social  life  of  the  people  centres  in  their 
churches.  Those  superb  church  edi- 
fices in  Wabash  Avenue  are  not  mere- 
ly for  the  assembling  of  a  congrega- 
tion on  Sunday  ;  they  are  rather  relig- 
ious club-houses,  and  some  of  them 
are  provided  with  a  complete  kitchen 
and  restaurant  apparatus,  and  con- 
tain extensive  suites  of  apartments,  in 
which,  twice  a  month,  the  ladies  give 
an  entertainment  to  the  congregation. 
The  Sunday  -  school  rooms  are  made 
inviting  by  pictures,  elegant  furniture, 
and  in  some  instances  by  fountains  and 


i86y.] 


Labor. 


345 


natural  flowers.  The  Rev.  Mr.  Hat- 
f  eld,  the  eloquent  Methodist  clergyman, 
a  recent  acquisition  to  Chicago,  who 
has  preached  in  many  cities,  assured 
us  \hat  in  no  city  of  the  United  States 
are\the  local  benevolent  operations  of 
the  churches  carried  on  with  such  sus- 
tained vigor,  and  on  such  a  thorough, 
far-reaching  system,  as  in  Chicago. 
There ^s  one  mission  Sunday  school 
there  vhich  gathers  every  Sunday 
afternooi  a  thousand  poor,  neglected 
children  into  apartments  replete  with 
all  the  blst  modern  apparatus  of  in- 
struction, \mcl  full  of  pleasing  objects. 
At  Chicag<\it  is  evident  that  the  good 
people  are  Vapidly  learning  and  fulfil- 
ling the  fin\l  purpose  of  a  Christian 
church  ;  whiih  is  not  the  promulgation 
of  a  barren  aid  dividing  opinion,  but 
the  diffusion  anong  the  whole  commu- 
nity of  the  civiization  hitherto  enjoyed 
only  by  a  few  Avored  families. 

Nowhere  in  th*  world  are  there  such 
striking  proofs  of\he  inexhaustible  vig- 
or and  power  of  Christianity  as  in  this 
new  prairie  town.  Here,  far  inland,  on 
the  shores  of  this  bke  lake,  amid  these 


ber,  this  entanglement  of  railroads,  this 
mighty  host  of  new-comers,  even  here  it 
is  still  the  voice  from  Palestine,  coming 
across  so  many  centuries,  that  delivers 
the  needed  message  :  "  Rest  not,  Chi- 
cago, in  planks,  nor  grain,  nor  railroads, 
nor  in  infinite  pork.  These  are  but 
means  to  an  end.  Never  mind  about 
cutting  out  St.  Louis:  try  only  which 
shall  do  most  for  the  civilization  of  the 
prairie  world."  Chicago  is  not  inatten- 
tive to  this  message,  and  is.  learning  to 
interpret  it  aright.  Those  beautiful  tem- 
ples, those  excellent  schools,  those  local 
benevolences,  that  innocent  social  life, 
those  ceaseless  battlings  with  vice,  that 
instinct  of  decoration,  that  conscien- 
tiously conducted  press,  those  libraries 
and  bookstores,  all  attest  that  Chicago 
does  not  mean  to  laboriously  champ  up 
the  shells  of  the  nut  of  life  and  throw 
the  kernel  away.  It  is  our  impression, 
that  human  nature  there  is  subject  to 
influences  as  favorable  to  its  health  and 
progress  as  in  any  city  of  the  world, 
and  that  a  family  going  to  reside  in 
Chicago  from  one  of  our  older  cities 
will  be  likely  to  find  itself  in  a  better 


gram   mountains, 


th\se   miles   of  tim-     place  than  that  from  which  it  came. 


LABOR. 


\\  THOSE  won  is  then  divinest?     His  who  moulds 
VV    With  pallidfinger  the  dark,  ignorant  clay, 
Making  new  radiate,  as  dawn  goldens  day,— 
Or  his,  for  whom  tie  hollow  pipe  enfolds 
Magic  to  melt  the  rtoon  in  tenderness,  — 
Or  his,  whose  orient  Viemory  in  sad  hours 
Shows  color  on  north  Ws  grown  lustreless, 
While  he  but  dreams  o\  Persia's  purple  towers,— 
Or  his,  who  pours  out  %  upon  a  song? 
Ah  !  weak  is  toil  as  foam\Upon  blown  beaches, 
Unless  the  might  of  love  Uiall  make  us  strong, 
And  weak  our  statues  andWeet  reedy  reaches, 
Unless  our  love  keep  tideless  overflow 
Round  even  the  lowliest  blossom  earth  can  show. 


34-6 


My  Friend  Bingham. 


[March, 


MY    FRIEND    BINGHAM. 


r^ONSCIOUS  as  I  am  of  a  deep 
>>  aversion  to  stories  of  a  painful  na- 
ture, I  have  often  asked  myself  wheth- 
er, in  the  events  here  set  forth,  the  ele- 
ment of  pain  is  stronger  than  that  of 
joy.  An  affirmative  answer  to  this  ques- 
tion would  have  stood  as  a  veto  upon 
the  publication  of  my  story,  for  it  is  my 
opinion  that  the  literature  of  horrors 
needs  no  extension.  Such  an  answer, 
however,  I  am  unwilling  to  pronounce  ; 
while,  on  the  other  hand,  I  hesitate  to 
assume  the  responsibility  of  a  decided 
negative.  I  have  therefore  determined 
to  leave  the  solution  to  the  reader.  I 
may  add,  that  I  am  very  sensible  of 
the  superficial  manner  in  which  I  have 
handled  my  facts.  I  bore  no  otner  part 
in  the  accomplishment  of  these  facts 
than  that  of  a  cordial  observer  ;  and  it 
was  impossible  that,  even  with  the  best 
will  in  the  world,  I  should  fathom  the 
emotions  of  the  actors.  Yet,  as  the 
very  faintest  reflection  of  human  pas- 
sions, under  the  pressure  of  fate,  pos- 
sesses an  immortal  interest,  I  am  con- 
tent to  appeal  to  the  reader's  sympathy, 
and  to  assure  him  of  my  own  fidelity. 

Towards  the  close  of  summer,  in  my 
twenty-eighth  year,  I  went  down  to  the 
seaside  to  rest  from  a  long  term  of 
work,  and  to  enjoy,  after  several  years 
of  separation,  a  tete-a-tete  with  an  inti- 
mate friend.  My  friend  had  just  arrived 
from  Europe,  and  we  had  agreed  to 
spend  my  vacation  together  by  the  side 
of  the  sounding  sea,  and  within  easy 
reach  of  the  city.  On  taking  posses- 
sion of  our  lodgings,  we  found  that  we 
should  have  no  fellow-idlers,  and  we 
hailed  joyously  the  prospect  of  the  great 
marine  solitudes  which  each  of  us  de- 
clared that  he  found  so  abundantly  peo- 
pled by  the  other.  I  hasten  to  impart 
to  the  reader  the  following  facts  in  re- 
gard to  the  man  whom  I  found  so  good 
a  companion. 

George  Bingham  had  been  born  and 
bred  among  people  for  whom,  as  he 
grew  to  manhood,  he  learned  to  ente'- 


tain  a  most  generous  contempt,  —  peo- 
ple in  whom  the  hereditary  possesion 
of  a  large  property  — for  he  assured 
me  that  the  facts  stood  in  the  reMtion 
of  cause  and  effect  —  had  extingiished 
all  intelligent  purpose  and  principle.  I 
trust  that  I  do  not  speak  rhetorically 
when  I  describe  in  these  terns  the 
combined  ignorance  and  vaniy  of  my 
friend's  progenitors.  It  was  their  for- 
tune to  make  a  splendid  figure  while 
they  lived,  and  I  feel  little  compunc- 
tion in  hinting  at  their  powrty  in  cer- 
tain human  essentials.  Bngham  was 
no  declaimer,  and  indeed  no  great 
talker ;  and  it  was  only  iow  and  then, 
in  an  allusion  to  the  pastas  the  field  of 
a  wasted  youth,  that  hf  expressed  his 
profound  resentment.  I  read  this  for 
the  most  part  in  the  severe  humility 
with  which  he  regarded  the  future,  and 
under  cover  of  whi-h  he  seemed  to 
salute  it  as  void  at  least  (whatever  other 
ills  it  might  contair)  of  those  domestic 
embarrassments  vhich  had  been  the 
bane  of  his  first  nanhood.  I  have  no 
doubt  that  mucl  may  be  said,  within 
limits,  for  the  graces  of  that  society 
against  which  -ny  friend  embodied  so 
violent  a  reaction,  and  especially  for 
its  good-huiror,  —  that  home-keeping 
benevolence  vhich  accompanies  a  sense 
of  materia]  repletion.  It  is  equally 
probable  flat  to  persons  of  a  simple 
constitution  these  graces  may  wear  a 
look  of  cfelightful  and  enduring  myste- 
ry ;  butpoor  Bingham  was  no  simple- 
ton. H«  was  a  man  of  opinions  numer- 
ous, celicate,  and  profound.  When, 
with  iie  lapse  of  his  youth,  he  awoke 
to  2  presentiment  of  these  opinions, 
and  cast  his  first  interrogative  glance 
upon  the  world,  he  found  that  in  his 
o;vn  little  section  of  it  he  and  his  opin- 
bns  were  a  piece  of  melancholy  imper- 
tinence. Left,  at  twenty- three  years  of 
age,  by  his  father's  death,  in  possession 
of  a  handsome  property,  and  absolute 
master  of  his  actions,  he  had  thrown 
himself  blindly  into  the  world.     But,  as 


F 
,H 


